"To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth. "To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on durable cultivating interests." He adds a reference to his own Bill "for utilizing public and quasi- public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of Mortmain and forbidding of alienation." This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).] Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870 Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his _Commons and Forests_ "which I hope will remind you of old times and of your own great services to the cause." 'We saved Wisley Common and Epping Forest,' says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869, the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee, notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had been amended, as it was in 1876. About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last, as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir laconically, 'threw on me lifelong duties.' II.