vi Journal of Proceedings.
Railway to High Beach were well and briefly stated by him, and by Mr.
C. J. Glass, Mr. F. Young, J.P., Mr. A. Lister, J.P., Dr. Cooke, Mr. F.
Or. Heath, and others.*
Sir H. J. Selwin-Ibbetson said: Mr. President and gentlemen, I am
very pleased to have been able to be present to-day and to hear the
various opinions that have been expressed. At the same time I would
say that they are expressed to a very prejudiced hearer—prejudiced on
the side you are advocating yourselves—because from the accident of my
position I was the draughtsman of the original 1878 Bill, and knew the
whole of the proceedings and terms on which that Bill was passed. And
I confess that the attempt on the part of the Corporation of the City to
violate, as I think directly, the terms of that seventh section took me
very much by surprise, coming as it did so soon after the passing of the
Act, and when that Act and its clauses must have been fresh in their
memories. [Hear, hear.] I cannot admit for one moment that a
different construction, at least in the intention in which the Act was
passed, than that which you have advocated to-day and which I have
always held, could have been put upon the Bill which was then before
the House of Commons. [Cheers.] There was no question then, and I
do not think there ought to be now, that the Forest was intended to be
preserved in its natural aspect as a Forest for the purpose of the recrea-
tion, amusement, and instruction of the people—of the people of the
East End of London especially. [Hear, hear.] It has been said, and I
think justly said, that if you had wanted a park, you would have set
about it in a very different sort of way. [Hear, hear.] You have a con-
siderable number of parks in London, and even parks to which the
inhabitants of the East End can readily resort for amusement, and if
you had wished to create a park of that kind it would not have been
necessary—certainly it would not have been necessary at the time the
Aet was passed—to take over the rights of a number of people from them,
and constitute a large area such as this for that purpose. I think they
would not have faced the grave difficulties before them if that had been
their object. [Cheers.] I mention this because I know that that was
not the object contemplated at the time, but the object was to preserve
in its natural and wild aspect a forest in the immediate neighbourhood
of the metropolis, such as no other city probably can boast of. [Loud
cheers.] With regard to the present scheme of the railroad, and how it
interferes with the Forest, I assert, and I think you have shown dis-
tinctly that such is the case, that it interferes materially (even if we allow
that they had the right to act in direct contravention, as I think they are
doing, of the Act of 1878) with the proper light in which the Forest
*These arguments were fully given in "Appendix No. 1" to vol. iii of the 'Trans-
actions,' and in the reports of several meetings contained in that volume. We print
Sir H. Selwin-Ibbetson's speech in full as a valuable contribution to the discussion.
Sir H. Selwin-Ibbetson was the author of the Epping Forest Act 1878, and carried it
through Parliament; no man can therefore be better qualified to explain the principles
of the Act, and the objects and intention of the Legislature in passing it.—Ed,