130 Large and Small Holdings 



though the idea had been carefully considered by the original pro- 

 moters of the Bill. The Conservative Party would never have con- 

 sented to such a thing. In their view the contemplated legislation 

 might be a useful means of keeping a greater proportion of the rural 

 population on the land, but they would have nothing to do with 

 anything which might recall the attacks of Land Reformers upon the 

 rights of property. "I myself am strongly against compulsion," said 

 Lord Salisbury in February 1892, "at all events at this stage; because 

 I do not believe it to be needed, and because I am sure that com- 

 pulsion will create ill-will 1 ." Lord Salisbury thus left it to experience 

 to prove the necessity for compulsion. The evidence which he 

 demanded was certainly not slow to appear. Even by 1893 Mr Shaw 

 Lefevre, in his excellent book on Agrarian Tenures, was able to say 

 "there is little hope of obtaining such land, unless power to purchase 

 it by compulsion be conferred on local authorities 2 ." The Liberal 

 Party were from that time forward zealous advocates of the intro- 

 duction of provision for compulsion. Mr Herbert Samuel, in his 

 book on Liberalism, published in 1902, describes this as the most 

 important necessary reform in the Act of 1892. The results of the 

 Committee of Enquiry of 1905-6, as already indicated, confirm the 

 proposition. In fact, the system of compulsory purchase had already 

 amply justified itself in the case of the creation of allotments, where, 

 under the Allotments Acts and the Local Government Act of 1894, 

 the District and Parish Councils could either buy or rent land 

 compulsorily, if so instructed by the County Council. 



These Acts had obviously been much more effective than the 

 Small Holdings Act. Between 1887 and 1897, 12,516 acres had 

 been acquired under the Allotments Acts by the local authorities, 

 and 3785 acres between 1897 and 1902. No doubt the question of 

 allotments depends on other considerations of agricultural and rural 

 economy than the question of small holdings, and the chances of the 

 multiplication of the former were originally better. But the difficulty 

 of acquiring land is common to both problems: so that the working 

 of the Allotments Acts clearly proved that the possibility of com- 

 pulsory purchase by the authority concerned could considerably 

 lessen that difficulty. 



It had also proved, however, that the possibility of compulsion by 



1 Quoted in Shaw Lefevre, op. cit. p. 86. 



2 Ibid., p. 273. It is remarkable that Mr Shaw Lefevre (now Lord Eversley) advocated 

 as long ago as 1893 precisely the measures which have now become law ; cp. op. cit. 

 pp. 170-173. 



