THE DEAN FOREST BILL.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
Sia,—As a native of the Forest of Dean "born and bred," who has taken a lively interest and an active part in all its affairs during the last fifty years, I thank you for the notice you have taken of the impending legislation for the Forest.
We want certain improvements, which cannot well be secured except by legislation. We asked the Government for a fish, and they have offered us a serpent ; we asked them for an egg, and they have tendered us a scorpion.
The actual requirements of the Forest population are the fol- lowing :— (1), Better roads and improved sanitary regulations ; (2), greater facilities for purchasing at a reasonable price small allotments of the outlying waste lands, for the purpose of building or enlarging workmen's dwellings, to remedy the present de- moralising and disgraceful overcrowding of the population ; (3), that the Crown -property shall bear its fair proportion of the
burden of local taxation ; (4), that suitable and sufficient' publiu cemeteries be provided for the burial of the dead.
Instead of meeting these requirements, the Bill now before Parliament is, for the most part, a Bill of pains and penalties,—a Bill of privations and restrictions. It proposes to appoint Com- missioners who shall have power to commute and extinguish the rights of Common now exercised by the working population of the Forest ; to direct the sale by auction, "to strangers and foreigners, it may be," of the bits of waste land round about the colliers' dwellings ; to deprive the foresters and the general com- munity, so far as the said Commissioners shall think fit, of their rights of way and rights of rambling in and over the Forest ; and_ to make nearly the whole Forest as private, and exclusive, and: aristocratic as any nobleman's park. It is difficult to conceive' what possible good can result from the carrying out of these. restrictive proposals.
In addition to the above, the Bill suggests a permissory arrangement for the gradual extinction of the Free Miners' rights, at the expense of the Commoners. A free miner, who may probably have no commoner's rights, is invited to surrender his free miner-- ship, and accept compensation in a bargain for the purchase ofa piece of the common land in which the said free miner may have no interest whatever; but the Bill proposes to "rob Peter to:par Paul." This is of far less consequence than -the other proposals, but the Foresters cling with wonderful tenacity to -their *admit "Free miners' rights," and there is no good reason why those rights should not be allowed toremain undisturbed.—I am,-Sir,
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