[PB: As we have already noted, Buckmaster was [acutely] aware that the future of the Common "should not be left dependent on the will of any individual, however influential, whose power to carry out his good intentions ends with his life." This vulnerability would become the central concern of Buckmaster's strategy in the next few years.]
Implicit in all this that the law was not helpful to [people] such as Buckmaster fighting for the protection of Wandsworth Common. We have already noted the prohibitive expense and the protracted delays. But in fact things were even worse for the Common.
One approach was popular agitation and what we have come to call "Civil Disobedience" (not all of it non-violent).
Another was symbolic acts of [ ] designed to goad enclosers into taking the [malefactors] to court [- to "try the case?"- [USE JCB's phrase]] — which would give Buckmaster and his allies an opportunity to argue their case, and perhaps create precedents.
Over and over, in spite of what he and others did, Spencer [refused to act].
If the Law would not oblige by providing cast-iron protections, then there would have to be an Act of Parliament. The issue is of course is that public in general must have control over public [goods]. The next few years were [crucial/vital/fraught/complicated]. On the one hand, intense local agitation and on the other [complex legal and ? disputations]
[agitation that was replicated in countless Commons and Forests throughout the country, including Hampstead Heath, Berhamstead Common, Epping Forest ADD OTHERS]
Even worse, there was no clear "law" against the destruction of Wandsworth Common to which he and the wider public could appeal.
And what if they had been successful? There was nothing in law to protect/sustain/? the Common in the future.
In short, at that time there was no sense of "public property" in English law. Everything had to belong to someone. And since the Common was private property, its owners could flog it off to whoever they wished and for (more or less) whatever purpose. This was a founding principle of British democracy and a foundation stone of the law.
Yet clearly the Common was disappearing in front of their eyes. Soon — perhaps just a few years — there would be nothing there at all. Surely this could not be right?
"The common was threatened on every side, and the increasing army of landgrabbers and jerry-builders would soon have joined hands on the last square foot of turf, and one of the most lovely commons within a few miles of Charing Cross would have become a wilderness of bricks and chimney-pots.