But this verdict of “Not guilty” only applies to the enclosure authority since it was chastened and corrected by the movement for the preservation of commons. All the early reports of the Enclosure Commissioners, or the Enclosure, Tithe and Copyhold Commissioners give abundant evidence of the hard, legal spirit in which the claims of cottagers were considered, and the slight reasons which were considered good enough for refusing recreation grounds and allotments. The twenty-seventh annual report--the _apologia_ of the Commissioners--pleads, as we have seen above, that 8,000,000 acres of commons, and 1,000,000 acres of commonable arable fields or meadows still existed, which was absurdly inaccurate, and that “of all modes of tenure in a fully peopled country there is none more prejudicial to improved culture than that of holding in common.” Again, the thirty-second report makes a great deal of the fact that the 590,000 acres of common and commonable land dealt with since the Act of 1845 had been distributed among 26,000 separate owners; which, however, only proved that the number of people who owned rights over unenclosed land had been greater than the number of owners of a corresponding area of enclosed land--but whether that was because commons and common fields favoured the creation or preservation of small properties (as it certainly does in many cases), or whether because a multiplicity of owners favours the preservation of commons and common fields (which is always the case), no credit was due to the General Enclosure Act, or to the body administering it. We find that between 1845 and 1875, out of a total area of 590,000 acres divided and allotted, just 1758 acres were set aside for recreation grounds, and 2195 acres for field gardens and allotments. The administration of the Act since 1877 is, therefore, a very severe condemnation of its administration in the earlier period. We have seen in the case of Ewelme and the neighbouring parishes, how the cottagers were injured on enclosure, by losing their source of fuel, without getting any compensation. I am indebted to Mr. John Swain for the following description of the effects of enclosure of a Welsh mountain. “The parish of ----, in the county of Montgomeryshire, is about five miles long by two miles broad. It consists for the most part of a hill, lying between a river and one of its tributaries. The hill rises to about 900 feet above sea level, and contains no unenclosed land. We have, therefore, in this parish, two strips of low-lying meadow land, land of a moderate quality on the hill slopes, and rough pasture land near the summit. On this hill most of the cottage holdings are to be found, usually in some sheltered hollow near a spring or a running stream....