THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT. 125 



I have heard Earl Selborne say that he, as a Conserva- 

 tive, found it very difficult to get reforms passed by parish 

 councillors, who might be Radical in politics, but as owners 

 of small cottage property were distinctly unprogressive. 

 This is probably true, and there is very little to choose 

 between the Conservative and the Radical, who are both 

 owners of property, however small that property might be, 

 when it comes to an extra penny upon the rates. 



To do the landowners justice, although I have given 

 instances of autocratic ruling by the heads of historic families 

 who have been trained from childhood to consider that 

 they have a kind of divine right to rule over the territory 

 which is theirs by inheritance, when the Parish Council 

 Act was passed it was not the squire who acted the part of 

 village tyrant, so much as the fanner, and his class. As 

 the squire and big landowner receded from the field of 

 parochial government and became but economic factors 

 in the background of rural life, the farming class, who 

 lacked the occasional large-handed benevolence and refine- 

 ment of those who had dominated the vestry meetings, 

 became the dictators. 



The Rural Magna Charta of 1894, though it had made a 

 breach in the wall of privilege, had not driven the captains 

 of industry from their fort. On the contrary, political 

 emancipation having gone ahead of economic emancipation, 

 the farmers and the petty bourgeoisie took possession of 

 the Parish and the Rural District Councils with all the eclat 

 of a democratic flourish of trumpets. Government by a 

 class, instead of being abolished became firmly entrenched, 

 and the petty tyranny exercised was perhaps more intense 

 than under the old regime. The historical parallel might be 

 sought in the villages of France after the Revolution. 



Labourers welcomed the Parish Councils, because these 

 inspired them with the hope that a lever had been put into 

 their hands which would be able to raise for immediate 

 solution not only the question of cottages and allotments, 

 but also of the parish award of Charity Lands and the 

 administration of non-ecclesiastical charities. 



For many years they had been suspicious as to the extent 



