The New Forest people are, in fact, just what circumstances have made them. Like all organised { 32} beings, they are the creatures of, and subject to, the conditions they exist in; and they cannot be other than they are--namely, parasites on the Forest. And, what is more, they cannot be educated, or preached, or worried out of their ingrained parasitical habits and ways of thought. They have had centuries--long centuries--of practice to make them cunning, and the effect of more stringent regulations than those now in use would only be to polish and put a better edge on that weapon which Nature has given them to fight with.
This being the conclusion, namely, that "things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be," some of my readers, especially those in the New Forest, may ask, Why, then, say anything about it? why not follow the others who have written books and books and books about the New Forest, books big and books little, from Wise, his classic, and the Victoria History, down to the long row of little rosy guide-books? They saw nothing of all this; or if they saw un-pleasant things they thought it better to hold their tongues, or pens, than to make people uncomfortable.
I confess it would be a mistake, a mere waste of words, to bring these hidden things to light if it could be believed that the New Forest, in its condition and management, will continue for any length of time to be what it is and has been--just that and nothing more. A district in England, it is true, but out of the way, remote, a spot to be visited once or twice in a lifetime just to look at the scenery, { 33} like Lundy or the Scilly Isles or the Orkneys. But it cannot be believed. The place itself, its curious tangle of ownership--government by and rights of the crown, of private owners, commoners, and the public--is what it has always been; but many persons have now come to think and to believe that the time is approaching when there will be a disentanglement and a change.
The Forest has been known and loved by a limited number of persons always; the general public have only discovered it in recent years. For one visitor twenty years ago there are scores, probably hundreds, to-day. And year by year, as motoring becomes more common, and as cycling from being general grows, as it will, to be universal, the flow of visitors to the Forest will go on at an ever-increasing rate, and the hundreds of to-day will be thousands in five years' time. With these modern means of locomotion, there is no more attractive spot than this hundred and fifty square miles of level country which contains the most beautiful forest scenery in England. And as it grows in favour in all the country as a place of recreation and refreshment, the subject of its condition and management, and the ways of its inhabitants, will receive an increased attention. The desire will grow that it shall not be spoilt, either by the authorities or the residents, that it shall not be turned into townships and plantations, nor be starved, nor its wild life left to be taken and destroyed by anyone and everyone. It will be seen that the "rights" I have spoken of, with the unwritten laws { 34} and customs which are kept more or less in the dark, are in conflict with the better and infinitely more important rights of the people generally--of the whole nation. Once all this becomes common knowledge, that which some now regard as a mere dream, a faint hope, something too remote for us to concern ourselves about, will all at once appear to us as a practical object--something to be won by fighting, and certainly worth fighting for.