THE ALLOTMENTS EXTENSION ACT. THE ALLOTMENTS EXTENSION ACT.
THE fuller and final Report of the Select Committee on the Charitable Trusts Acts, which deals especially with the Allotments question, has just made its somewhat tardy appearance. It fully justifies the opinions expressed in November last in these columns on the result of the evidence. The Committee naturally expresses itself in less outspoken and emphatic language, as becomes a mixed body speaking through a Ministerial reporter. But in the main, to any one reading between the lines, it is clear that the Committee agreed with us. "Your Committee thinks that the Commissioners might well have been less exacting regarding technical points of procedure in dealing with the Association,"—i.e., Mr. Collings's Association for helping the labourers to obtain their rights,—" and must express the hope that these difficulties between the Association and the Charity Commissioners may be overcome." We hope so, too, or in other words, we hope that the Charity Commission will relax the restrictions of red-tape. But the expression of the hope for the future must surely be taken as an admission that the Commission has not been wholly blameless in the past. The Committee fully recognise the fact that the partial failure and inadequate execution of the Act, or as it is put, "the difficulties and delays which have occurred." have been " mainly due to the unwillingness of the Trustees to carry-out the new duties imposed upon them." Of that, no one who heard or has read the evidence in a candid spirit, not even Sir Thomas Acland himself, can have any doubt. The letters which have appeared on the subiect in our own columns, emanating from men superior to the average Trustee, strongly confirm this statement. Why does Mr. Bullock Hall insist on the difficulties which may arise in carrying out the Act ? He does not raise these difficulties in dealing with lettings to fariners when he has to exercise a discretion as to character and fitness. Under the Act, such considerations are (whether rightly or wrongly is of no consequence) absolutely excluded. There must, therefore, be some other cause than difficulties which have not yet arisen for suggesting these difficulties beforehand. One cause, perhaps, may be that which was incidentally mentioned by Mr. Hall,—the fact that Trustees are too often non-resident. This, however, is only another proof that the present system of selecting Trustees is a bad one, and needs amendment in the direction of representation of the people, the people on the spot electing their own Trustees. It may be true that at first there may be a temporary failure, as in the case at Ivinghoe, where the Trustees, having resigned in a pet because they hated the Act, and were told to do their duty, there was found to be a difficulty in getting any Trustees at all. But that was simply and solely because the agricultural labourer has not yet begun to trust himself. When he has a vote, and finds he can use it in safety, when he finds himself really an independent citizen of the country in which lie has hitherto been a landless man and a serf bound to the soil, he will find no difficulty in electing members of his own class to be Tiustees, and they will find no difficulty in becoming efficient Trustees. Certainly they could not be less efficient, at least from the agricultural labourer's point of view, than the present class.
But even as it is, the Commissioners have power to make the Trustees do their duty. Tha Committee rather accepts on this point the defence of the Commissioners that, after all, they did exercise their powers as best they could. But it is singular that in none of the many cases brought forward, some of which were cited in a former article, in which Trustees have neglected or refused to perform their duties, or have committed distinct and flagrant breaches of trust, did the Commissioners ever exercise their coercive powers. They wrote letters, indeed, but the letters did not " mean business." The Court of Chancery does not allow Trustees to resign without cause, and to throw the trust into confusion without at least mulcting them in costs. Why were not some of these Trustees, especially those at Ivinghoe, proceeded against and compelled at least to pay the costs of a motion to commit ? A single example of this kind would have been more potent than a hundred letters of polite representation.
In two distinct classes of cases in which the Commissioners certainly aided and abetted the Trustees rather than the bene ficiaries, the Report inferentially, though not in terms, condemns them. One of the " dodges " of the Trustees for evading the Act was to demand a whole year's rent in advance, though the Act of 1882 differed markedly from the Act of 1873 by omitting all reference to such a power, and though it is never exercised in dealing with ordinary tenants. In one or two cases the Commissioners actually sanctioned this illegality. After strong pressure from Mr. Collings's Association they withdrew their sanction to the whole illegality, but they still allowed the Trustees to insist on half a year's rent in advance. The Committee cannot say that the Commissioners were bound to disallow rules providing for the payment of rent in advance ;" they think, for no substantial reason, that the matter is a left to the discretion of the Commissioners," but " they consider that in no case ought more than a quarter's rent to be required by any rule." The Commissioners, therefore, exercised their discretion in a way, at first four times, and latterly twice, as hostile to the labourers as a mixed Committee thinks there was any authority or occasion for. The Committee recommends various amendments of the Act, so no doubt the House of Commons will take the fair view of the case, and declare that what is not expressly enjoined is forbidden, and that the Trustees have no power to make rules against one class, especially against the less readymoneyed class of tenants, which they do not make against another and richer class.
In those cases where, on the request of Trustees, certificates of exemption from the operation of the Act were given for certain lands because they were grass-lands and so forth, the Committee distinctly recognises that the Commissioners were wrong in abetting the Trustees by granting such certificates, even after inquiry, the Commissioners having already practically admitted they were wrong in granting such certificates before hearing the labourers. For the Committee suggests that the exemption clause " should be extended to lands which it is desirable to exempt for other reasons than distance," thus showing that, in their opinion, the section does not extend to such cases at present. In other words, the Commissioners have, without authority, given authority to Trustees to evade the Act.
The final conclusion of the Committee is that " obstacles to the working of the Act are largely due to the difficulty of interpreting some of its main provisions." This difficulty has been greatly exaggerated. Nothing is so easy as to find difficulty and obscurity if you want it, especially in matters of law. If the Commissioners had " pressed upon Trustees the importance of giving effect to the Act," which it is perfectly obvious they should and could have done without, as Mr. ShawLefevre suggests, " going out of their way to do so," these difficulties would have vanished. It may be allowed that the Commissioners did not seek to nullify the Act." But it must be admitted that they took a course which strongly tended to nullification. Nor do we think that their main justifications for that course are proved, though adopted by Mr. ShawLefevre. They are that the Act was hostile to the interests of the Charities as income-producing endowments, and that it was obscure in " not more distinctly declaring that the object of granting allotments is to be preferred to that of obtaining the largest income available for doles." The first is not the case, as a matter of fact and experience ; it may be doubted whether the last is the case, as a matter of law. For, seeing that the later provision overrides the earlier, and that the new Act differs from all previous Acts, in leaving out all supposed safeguards for the rent, it is difficult not to infer that the Act was meant to secure allotments, and that the income was left to take care of itself. However, as most people will agree with the view of the Committee that "doles" are "a charitable purpose which deserve little favour," it is to be hoped that the amendments they suggest for making the intention of the Act clear to the most wilfully blind will be adopted, and that " with a cordial co-operation between the Charity Commissioners and the Allotments Association, the Act will be brought into effective operation."
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