2o6 The Northern Allotment Society. [July, 



nineteen persons and could not otherwise sue or be sued 

 collectively. 



The policy of these companies has, however, been to a 

 considerable extent leavened with a determination to lay out 

 their property on a liberal scale. In all these cases, more 

 or less extensive steps are being taken to banish the con- 

 ventional treatment of a building estate under which a 

 maximum number of human beings are crowded on to a 

 given area of ground. 



The remaining estates have been parcelled out amongst 

 the purchasers in accordance with conditions fixed by them- 

 selves before entering upon a contract to purchase. These 

 conditions were embodied in deeds of mutual covenants. These 

 deeds define the process by which each subscriber was to 

 become the proprietor of his allotment, and the conditions 

 under which it should in future be held. The deed further 

 provides for the execution of whatever collective work of an 

 initial or permanent character had been agreed upon, such 

 as the construction of roads, paths, and bridges, the provision 

 of water supply, redemption of tithe, quit rents, and land tax, 

 reservation of common land for quarries, sand pits, or other 

 purposes, approval or otherwise of building plans, and the 

 future maintenance of any common responsibility or privilege. 

 Briefly stated, the parties concerned covenanted to allot the 

 estate amongst themselves by mutual agreement, or failing that, 

 by private auction. 



For this purpose the estate was laid out in lots each con- 

 taining the greatest common measure of the acreage required 

 by the applicants, generally one acre, each lot being provided 

 with road frontage, existing or new. The total estimated cost of 

 the estate, that is, the purchase money paid to the vendor plus the 

 estimated cost of the new roads, roadside fencing, surveying, 

 legal and secretarial work, and any other service of a collective 

 character, was then apportioned over the lots comprising the 

 estate by an independent and competent valuer, regard being 

 had to the relative position of each lot, proximity to railway 

 station, aspect, soil, &c. Each allottee was furnished with a 

 copy of this valuation, and the valuer's notes upon the character 

 of the ground were placed at his disposal, so that an inexperienced 



