Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/195

 Commissioners are to hold a local inquiry, and then prepare a scheme which is to be submitted to a committee of the House. The scheme, when approved by the committee, comes before the House for confirmation. It may prove unfortunate that agents originally selected to administer an Act having for its main object inclosure—i.e. the dividing of the land among separate owners—should have been chosen to carry out one specially intended, as Mr. Cross explained, to facilitate regulation—i.e. the preserving of the land open for the use of all.

So great has been the tendency to inclose that, out of 414,000 acres available for allotments, recreative-grounds, &c., under the Act of 1845, only 4,000 had actually been thus allotted; whilst in 1869, out of 6,916 acres proposed to be inclosed, such were the views of the Commissioners, that they considered nine acres to be adequate reservation for public purposes—viz. three for recreation, and