ADVANTAGES OF INDIVIDUAL ACTION
All Mr. H. says might tell with a society heavily weighted with past efforts, as I daresay the C.P.S. is, or bound to keep power to take initiatory action where local strength may be forthcoming after a time, but not necessarily governing my decision about the money that I really have in hand, available for precisely the only opportunity open at this moment, by which I can help forward the preservation of commons. Every year that we can keep them, people care more and do more; every acre kept is a certain possession for ever. The more serious point of Mr. Hunter’s letter seems to me that in which he calls Mr. A.’s “not a strong case.” By which I gather that he means not sure to win. But then he goes on to say that it is an important suit, as keeping the common till some plan for regulation can be arranged.
On the whole, therefore, I am strongly inclined to give the money.... If it be lost, in the sense of not winning the suit, and yet if the suit is essential to keeping the question open, it is worth while for someone to be the loser. I expect that causes are like stakes which are driven into a marsh and are buried, but carry the roadway; and who could lose the money better than I, to whom the hope and future are so clear, and to whom people have trusted money, just that I may be able at critical moments to dare something for a great and possible good?
April 25th, 1881.
To Mr. Shaen.
I am indeed delighted to hear that there is a chance of your buying Freshwater Place.
So strongly do I feel about the playground and a garden, so sure am I of the great pressure that would be put upon owners to sell or let, for building a church or a chapel, or a school, or an institution, if not houses, that, quite independently of my old affection and memories of the place and the tenants, I feel as if it must not go into strange hands. I’ve been thinking it all over, and whether I ought to buy it myself; but, if I were ill, or away, or dead, its management might be a trouble to my sisters. Now would you be afraid to share it with me? I couldn’t throw myself into the personal work down there; I couldn’t stand it; but, while I keep at all well, I would look into its affairs, choose and watch its workers, remove or guide them, and have its accounts regularly audited. There would then be an almost certainty of its paying 5 per cent.; and, at the worst, if anything prevents my watching it, you would only have risked half the money.
Abinger Hatch, Dorking,
May 3rd, 1881.
To Mrs. Shaen.