CHAPTER XIII 



PEASANT REVOLTS {continued) 



It remains now to refer to the attempts, legislative 

 and voluntary, which have been made in modern 

 times to restore in some small way the connection of 

 the labourer with the soil. The few and stinted 

 efforts made to give back land to the rural popula- 

 tion are in marked contrast to the continuous energy 

 shown in depriving them of it. These efforts took the 

 form of granting, at a rent, allotments of land to the 

 rural population. The granting of allotments has 

 always been described as a generous policy, and great 

 credit is claimed for it. But looking at the question 

 with labourers' eyes and from the labourers' stand- 

 point, the practice after all is only a loan to the 

 peasantry of an instrument which had originally been 

 filched from them. 



The question of allotments, which gained so much 

 attention in the eighties of last century, was by no 

 means a new one. By a return issued 1873 it was 

 shown that, without reckoning land attached to 

 cottages, there were about a quarter of a million 

 allotments in England and Wales under one acre 

 each, most of them below a quarter of an acre.^ 



An association of land and glebe owners was formed 

 for the express purpose of extending the allotment 

 system.^ Several Bills were introduced during last cen- 

 tury for the purpose of supplying labourers with land, 



' " Return of Allotments and Small Holdings." Board of Agricul- 

 ture, C. 6144. • 



2 See " Landlords and Allotments," by the Earl of Onslow, Hon. Sec. 

 to the Association. (Longmans, 1886.) 



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