404 PARISH COUNCIL POWERS 



food to fatten a couple of pigs for home consump- 

 tion, and at the same time they are filling up 

 their spare time in a manner calculated to supply 

 them with experience, should they have a chance 

 later of getting on to a holding. 



As regards the effect of supplying the demand 

 for land on the population, the following figures 

 speak for themselves : 



Up to 1891 the population had decreased from 

 950 to 720. The allotments were obtained in 

 1894. By 1901 the population had risen to 795. 



Parish Council Powers. The Parish Council of 

 Castle Morton is one of the few instances where 

 their powers have been used to acquire small 

 holdings as distinguished from allotments. 



The work that has been done here and the 

 manner in which it has been carried out would 

 seem fully to justify extension of their powers in 

 this direction. It has been urged that the members 

 of the Parish Council are men of limited ideas, 

 swayed by private and local prejudices, and that if 

 further powers are to be given to anybody it should 

 be to the County Council, whose members are 

 more likely to be impartial. 



But County Council members have not got that 

 local knowledge and interest, especially the know- 

 ledge of one another, which is so essential in this 

 matter ; and, as a rule, coming as they do from a 

 particular class, their ideas on the subject of 

 supplying land to smaller men are limited and 

 prejudiced to a degree 'which their superior educa- 

 tion and standing seems unable to dispel. 



