i8o LAND REFORM 



Later on the present writer introduced a "Peasant 

 Proprietary and Acquisition of Land by Occupiers 

 Bill," and an "Allotments and Small Holdings Bill," 

 but these measures made no progress in the House, 

 though public opinion outside was rapidly strengthen- 

 ing in favour of the principle contained in them.^ "^ 



The time had arrived, however, when the political 

 status of the labourers was to be changed. The 

 Franchise Bill, which became law in December, 1884, 

 extended household franchise to the counties. The 

 labourers acquired the rights of citizenship, and hence- 

 forth became an object of attention on the part .of 

 different political parties. But the effect of the Act 

 would have been nullified by the law which disqualified 

 any man who had received from the parish medical 

 relief of any kind for himself or his family. As the 

 majority of the labourers — in some localities nine- 

 tenths of them — were compelled, through their ex- 

 treme poverty, to receive this relief in some form or 

 another, an alteration of the law was necessary if they 



with regard to the Act and the opposition to the legal rights of the 

 cottagers on the part of country trustees, see Report of Select Com- 

 mission on the Charitable Trusts Acts, 1884, No. 306, and Report of 

 Select Committee on Endowed Schools Acts, 1886-1887, No. 120. 



^ It was in a speech in support of these Bills that the phrase "Three 

 acres and a cow " was used. The exact words were that " He," the 

 writer, "hoped that the day would come when every labourer who wanted 

 them might have his three acres and a cow." All the statements made 

 afterwards as to providing the labourers with cows, etc., were, of course, 

 amusing political inventions. There was nothing original about the 

 phrase. It was quite a natural one to use in support of a measure which 

 provided, among other things, three acres of pasture land, that quantity 

 being generally reckoned as sufficient to support a cow. But it attracted 

 a great deal of attention. A large number of letters were received from 

 home and foreign correspondents, some of them declaring that the 

 phrase had been used by German writers ; that its equivalent was to be 

 found in Virgil ; that Sir John Sinclair had used it early in the century ; 

 that Jeremy Bentham was the real author of it ; etc. etc. 



