Odger's English Common Law

NATURAL RIGHTS.
587"
sufficiency of pasture for his beasts. Any act that totally destroys the
herbage, as feeding innumerable rabbits on a common, will support an action
against the lord. 1
If a commoner sue for a nuisance to the common (e.g., where the defen-
dant has dug a pit in the common), he must prove that his enjoyment of
his right of common has thereby been appreciably impaired, as otherwise
he has no cause of action. 2
So an action will lie by a commoner against a stranger for putting his
cattle on the common and thus preventing him from enjoying his right to
the full. In such an action the defendant pleaded a licence from the lord
to put his cattle there, but he did not aver that there was sufficient common
left for the commoners ; this was held to be no good plea, for the lord
had no right to give a stranger such a licence unless there was enough
common left for the commoners. 8
The lord of a manor by deed leased the right to train and gallop horses
on the waste of the manor. It was held that he would not be liable for
damage done to the rights of common of pasturage of the copyholders by
the lessee, unless it was proved that the lessee caused the damage as the
lord's agent or with his licence ; and that the mere fact that the lord had
given such a licence did not of necessity involve injury to the right of the
commoners to pasture their cattle thereon. 4
V. Natural Rights.
There are other rights attached to the occupation or
ownership of land which do not depend in any way upon a
grant express or implied or upon any long-continued user,
but are incident to the property in the land. These are
called "natural rights;" they are in fact involved in the
conception of ownership, they are fragments of dominion.
Chief among them are the right of support to land in its
natural condition and the right to the flow of a stream down
its natural watercourse.
(a) Right of Support.
Every owner of land has a natural right to the support of
the subjacent soil and also of the adjacent land. Any person
i Wells v Watlinq (1778), 2 W. Bl. 1233.
. p/r Lord HoIt/dX in Ashby v. White (1703) 1 Sm L C 12th ed., at
n 289 Robert Maw's Case (1612), 9 Rep. Ill b, 113 a Co. Litt. 56 a.
;
P '
i Smithy Feverel (1675), 2 Mod. 6 ; 1 Freeman's B. 190 Greenhaw v. Ilsley
;
(1746), Willes, 619.
*
i Coote v. Ford (1900), 83 L. T. 482.