8. ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



from doing so, though Canon Tuckwell in a famous con- 

 troversial battle fought down the opposition of his Bishop 

 successfully. 



In spite of the Bishop's inhibitions he did cut up his glebe 

 farm of about 200 acres into allotments, and after two years 

 lie could write : " Already throughout the village I found- 

 corn bags ranged along the walls, potatoes under the beds, 

 hams hanging from the ceilings wrapped up in old Reynolds' 

 weekly newspapers ; the housewives for the iirst time in 

 their lives facing winter nnemploy without alarm. 1 



Canon Tuckwell however by no means regarded allotments 

 as a solution of the problem of rural poverty. Far from it ; 

 for he became a convinced land nationalise!'. A farm at 

 Assington, near Sudbury, Suiiolk. was sold to some labourers 

 by the Liberal member for Mid Norfolk. It had a struggle 

 during the depression, but has managed to survive, to this 

 day (KjJo) and I am informed bv a membei of it that a share 

 sold in 1899 changed hands in 1910 for r;o. 



The discovery that the Aet of \\'i!liam IV. applied to 

 all charity lands lies to the credit of Mr. ]. Theodore Dodd, 

 the son of an Oxfordshire clergyman. An agitation arose in 

 the House of Commons, powerfully backed by Mr. Jesse 

 Collins and Sir Charles Dilke, to bring in an Allotment Act 

 in i^Sj, which instituted the principle of compulsion, and 

 made the County Court and not the Charity Commission 

 the final arbiter. Mr. Howard Evans, who devoted a tre- 

 mendous amount of energy in getting up facts, was the real 

 author of the Act. This was snccessfuHv passed through 

 the Lower House in iS8j, but unfortunately, the House of 

 Lords destroyed the validity of it by making the Charity 

 Commissioners the supreme judges as to whether land should 

 or should not be let. The land whieh could be used as allot- 

 ments under this Extension (if the Allotments Act, iSNj, 

 was bv no means inconsiderable, audit wa^ calculated that 

 excluding land allocated to Church, or educational purposes, 

 the value for purely allotment purpose's would be r, 000,000. 2 



Amongst labourers there was a strong feeling of injustice 



