Mr. Chaplin has this week been delivering various addresses- to
his constituents in Lincolnshire, dealing not only with his own special department, but with the general political situa- tion. But perhaps his most effective point was made at Branston on Wednesday night, where he answered the charge that the Conservative Government had taken up the subject of allotments, not in order to benefit the rural labourers, but in order to raise the rent of land, since the landlord found that a somewhat better rent could be obtained from allotment- holders, than could be squeezed out of the farmers. That charge, he said, seemed perfectly absurd when it was proved by official returns that between 1876 and 1890, rents had been lowered voluntarily by the landlords as much as 60 per cent. on bad land, and fully 15 per cent. on good dairy-laud; and that every landlord thought himself fortunate who could make a clear 24 per cent. on the purchase-money he had given for land. The allotment legislation of the Tories has been entirely due to popular sympathies, and to no other motive. English tenants do not even affect to think that the landowners as a„ class have been grasping, and anxious to extract the uttermost farthing from their tenants-at-will or lessees. These are fables invented for the purposes of the platform, and for the purposes of the platform alone.
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