Unfortunately for the reputation of the past there are but few places to be found where the rights of the weak have not been most shamefully encroached upon by the strong; and the little village of Paddington affords not the least remarkable example of these glaring defects in the working of “our glorious constitution.”
Here, as elsewhere, might has usurped the place of right; cunning has lent a helping hand, and documents which would the most plainly bear witness to this fact have been destroyed. However, the one great fact that “land has been lost” remains to speak for itself; and the “eternal remedy” will assuredly come sooner or later, although the wronged be now cast down, and the wrong doer walk so seemingly secure.
“The blessings which civilization and philosophy” have brought with them have been undoubtedly a great benefit to the poor as well as to the rich; and one of the most powerful writers of the present day has thought it necessary to point out how those benefits offer a compensation for the loss of many ancient rights and privileges. [55b] But civilization and philosophy are not content with their past or present doings, for there are many civilized people, and philosophers too, who believe the present arrangements give the lion’s share of those benefits to the rich; and there are those who believe that present enactments are so unwise as to facilitate the accumulation of riches by the least deserving members of the state. Further “compensation,” therefore, they believe to be necessary, if the blessings which civilization and philosophy are destined to work out in the beneficent decrees of universal lore and justice are to be of present use to the people.
The tales told of the robberies of public property in Paddington are more fitted for the pages of a romance or a novel, than a sober history. And as to these robberies in Paddington, the dramatist, the novelist, and the writers of romance, have done much more than the historian to expose and correct the vices of the past.
One of Mr. Charles Ollier’s novels [56a] contains so many allusions to this place, that the reader is obliged to believe the elucidation of its history formed one of the chief objects of the writer.
And if the incidents connected with Paddington Green and its neighbourhood had not been more melo-dramatic than farcical, one might have imagined that the little farce [56b] in which Mr. Buckstone lately delighted the Haymarket audiences had some reference to this place.
Let those who believe the villagers’ green to be the least altered place in Paddington, turn to Chatelain’s beautiful little delineation of it, as it appeared to him in 1750, or to a larger print published in 1783. [56c] “Linney” would as soon find out his “eight acres,” if he could now pay us a visit, as would the present inhabitants of this place discover any likeness of that which was, to that which now is, Paddington Green.
In 1783, the enclosed green included all that land which extends from its present eastern extremity to Dudley-house on the west; that is to say, all the present Green, and all the land south of the pathway, from the Green to St. Mary’s Terrace; and from the Harrow-road across this green there was a public foot path to the church, the old church-yard and some houses.
From Chatelain’s print we see that the Green, though not enclosed so far westward in 1750, extended northward to the old Church-yard, including the land on which the houses on the north side of Paddington-Green have been built. A large pond existed on the Green at that date, which was drained into another, south of the Harrow-road, and as many of the present inhabitants know, it has not been filled up many years. [57a] And between these ponds, to command the road from Harrow, the people erected, during the Commonwealth, one of those detached ramparts which they built up by the side of every entrance into the capital, as a sign of their determination to protect the liberties of England from the advance of that tyranny which they had driven out, and which they determined never again to endure. [57b]
Although the Green has wasted to its present dimensions, and although the “commons and waste,” in Paddington have vanished, the following notices, which I have found on the minutes of the Vestry, will shew that the parish has received some compensation for the inclosure of certain pieces of waste, besides those purchased by the bishop and his lessees:—