166 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



system, and the legislation that resulted was the present 

 Small Holdings Act, under which county councils can 

 take land compulsorily, after inquiry by commissioners 

 as to the allotment requirements in any district, but 

 have no power to enable small holders to acquire the 

 necessary land as a freehold. 



The freehold is, in the strong conviction of the writer, 

 the absolutely essential part of a good scheme ; and 

 good management is equally essential, and that has 

 been absent from a large number of abortive plans. 



The difficult cottage question, too, would, we believe, 

 be satisfactorily settled were agricultural labourers 

 enabled to obtain their dwellings as freeholds. Good 

 cottages, as it has already been shown, do not pay their 

 builders ; and it is only when they are given rent free 

 that the outlay upon them is regarded by the landlord 

 as a means of letting a farm at a renumerative rent, 

 and by the farmer as part of the wages of the labourer, 

 that the speculation of building them is made to " pay." 

 With the labourer owning the cottage himself he would 

 not require that it should pay. Although the money 

 he spent upon it would not produce as much interest 

 in the shape of the rent as he might get by other in- 

 vestments, he would have the enormous satisfaction 

 that it was his own inalienable property, and that this 

 freehold land for cultivation would furnish the strongest 

 possible inducement to remain in the country. 



It is very gratifying to know that another small 

 holdings inquiry is in progress, conducted by a com- 

 mittee whose chairman is Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., 

 with the very object of instituting a system of freehold 

 allotments. It has published its programme in a little 

 green-covered brochure, entitled " The Land for the 

 People." It is also very gratifying to read in the 

 preface to this little book that so prominent a statesman 

 as Mr. Balfour gives his hearty support to the same 

 system, and that before long legislative power will be 



