THE ALLOTMENTS EXTENSION ACT.
HERE is an Act, of a purely social and economic character, passed by the consent of both Houses and all parties in a busy and bitter Session, and which is pre-eminently an Act carrying into practice those benevolent aspirations for the benefit of the working-classes, and especially of the agricultural labourer, so uniformly professed by squires and landowners. Yet, owing to the persistent hostility of the landowners, and farmers, and parsons, and lawyers, who dominate the agricul- tural districts, and the obstructive immovability of the Charity Commission, who were at their own request specially set to superintend its working, this beneficent Act has proved almost a dead-letter.
The Act was but a small matter in itself. Scattered through- out England far and wide, existing at one time in nearly every parish in England, and in some parishes by dozens, were Charities established for the purpose of what are now commonly known as doles. The doles consisted of gifts,—sometimes of money, but more often of bread, fuel, clothing, and the like. With few exceptions (among whom, by-the-way, Mr. Jesse Collings is one), every one is convinced of the absolute harmful- ness of these dole-charities; and under the Endowed Schools Acts the Commissioners have express powers to divert them to educa- tional purposes. Mr. Collings, therefore, saw an opportunity for making useful and beneficial what most people think useless or harmful. Under an old Act of 1832, amended in 1873, Trustees were empowered to let in allotments of not more than one acre, lands which, under Enclosure Acts, had been set aside for the benefit of the poor for fuel, or in lien of rights of fuel ; but the poor were to be industrious, of good character (which mostly meant not Dissenters or Radicals), and legally settled in the parish. Mr. Collings' Act was called the Allotments Extension Act, because it took up the principle thus laid down. It extended the principle to all dole- charity lands not used as recreation-grounds, and included in the persons benefited all " cottagers, labourers, and others" residing in the parish or adjoining parishes, without regard to character or legal "settlement ;" and, above all, it made letting in allotments compulsory, instead of discretionary, with the Trustees. Provision was made for due notice being given to the labourers of their rights under the Act, and directions given as to the terms on which the lettings were to be made. Originally it was proposed that if the Trustees neglected or refused to put the Act in force, or made rules for letting which the labourers objected to, the labourers might apply summarily to the County-Court Judge of the district. This proposal the Charity Commissioners strongly objected to ; and at their instance an amendment was inserted in the House of Lords. (ever ready to spoil a measure dis- approved by landlords) to give the jurisdiction over the
Trustees to the Commissioners themselves. At the same time, through Lord Colchester, then a Charity Commissioner, they opposed the Bill itself. That opposition they have apparently extended to the Act when passed ; and if they have not actively and of malice aforethought obstructed its working, they have neglected and minimised their functions under it. As a public department charged with the supervision of local authorities, it was certainly to be expected of them that, as the Board of Trade or the Local Government Board do in similar cases, they should send out notioes to the Trustees telling them that the Act had been passed, showing them their duties under it, and suggesting the best way of carrying it into effect. As a matter of fact, they did nothing. They say in defence they are not a roving Commission, nor a Commission of Inquiry ; that they are a Court of Conciliation, and that it is their business to wait till set in motion by others. This answer will not hold good. In one case that was brought before them three charities were concerned. Of one, the Com- missioners already had cognisance, but the other two they either did not know of, or, at all events, the accounts of the Trustees had not been sent as required by the Charitable Trusts Acts. At once the Commission is in action. Eager, with all the eagerness of a good Judge, to amplify their jurisdic- tion, they write to the labourers for the names of the Trustees, and demand from the Trustees their accounts. Butt while the Commission thus took action over the accounts, the interests of the labourers are treated as of secondary importance. These poor men had begun agitating for the allotments in March, 1883; yet, even on July 5th of this year, the Trustees had done nothing to let the men have them, and the Com- missioners had not exercised their powers of compulsion.
In general, even when the Commission was set in action from outside, they took the narrowest and most technical views possible of their powers and duties. They refused to correspond with Mr. Collings and his Allotments Extension Association on behalf of the labourers, on the ground that they could not correspond with two people at once, though, as a rule, the labourers were too ignorant and unlettered to write the necessary letters themselves. When, on one occasion, the labourers did write, they told them they could only receive communications on foolscap paper. In the Paignton case, the Commissioners actually passed, or omitted to examine and disallow, rules drawn up by the Trustees, which were acknow- ledged by Sir S. Fitzgerald to be in two important points pro- bably ultra vires, while on a third point they were so palpably illegal that he himself pointed it out as a reason for assuming that they had never been before the Commission at all. In many cases they have allowed the Trustees to make rules demanding half a year's rent in advance, though the Act conspicuously differed from that of 1873 by omitting any power to demand rent in advance, and it has never been the practice of Trustees of Charity-lands to demand rent in advance from the farmers or parsons to whom they are generally let. The result has been to impose a heavy line on the men, and in some cases to prevent their taking the allotments at all. In nearly every case, even when the Commission have eventually aided the men, they have done so under pressure and after great delay. Yet to these poor men, though it is not, per- haps, a case of life and death, it is yet a case, as Mr. Collings puts it, of the difference between semi-starvation and comparative ease. The Commissioners plead over-pressure. It is not to be wondered at that an office presided over by Sir S. Fitzgerald should make that plea, for he clearly knows next to nothing of what goes on in his own office, and made a most foolish figure when cross-examined even as to generalities. If it were not for the energy, intelligence, and good-sense of Mr. Longley, it is difficult to see how the office would get through any work at all. But it is clear, from the tone even of his evidence, that he dislikes the Act. He regards it as inimical to the first duty of the Commission,—the preservation of the Charity property. Yet general experience, not only in other countries but in England, is in favour of the superior pro- ductiveness, and therefore higher rents, of allotments and spade- husbandry generally. The argument from loss is certainly not supported by facts. In nearly every case the rents have been raised far in excess of the rates and outgoings to be met. Thus in one case, in which a Canon was acting-Trustee, he would do nothing except under pressure, and then covertly demanded a rise of 50 per cent., and eventually obtained a rise of a fraction under 33 per cent., in the rent of the land. Again, the Commission has shown itself invincibly reluctant to exercising its powers of compulsion and punishment of the Trustees, even in cases of gross misconduct. Numerous cases
were brought forward and admitted in which the Trustees would not put the Act in force where the lands had been let to their own relations or even to themselves. At Fishlake, at Adderbury, at Cloudesley Courbett, and at Holy Cross, the lands were let to relatives of the Trustees; and in some of these cases the letting was wholly illegal, as it took place after the men had applied for the lands, and the Commissioners had said they ought to have them. At Lavenham, two Trustees, at Bampton and at Bletchington, the parsons, who were Trustees, were in possession of the lands themselves. In none of these cases did the Commissioners make any but the mildest complaint of the gross breach of trust which the Trustees had committed.
Perhaps the most effective confirmation of the charges levelled against the Commissioners was the Return put in by them to show how active they had been. It appears that 156 cases have been before them. Of the whole number of cases, fifty-five came from Norfolk and Suffolk ; nine, the next highest number, from the small county of Warwick. It is a curious coincidence that Mr. Jesse Collings is Member for Ipswich, and his Association has its head-quarters in Birmingham, county Warwick.
Into the conduct of the Trustees we have not space to enter. To judge from the behaviour and evidence of two persons from Ivinghoe, that conduct is founded on the disgust of the lords of land and employers of farm-labour at the labourers being endowed with rights by Act of Parliament, and daring to enforce them. Their conduct makes one thing clear. It is essential that the Commissioners should revolutionise their system of selecting Trustees. The Trusts should either be vested in the representative local authorities, when we get them, or the Trustees should be themselves a body of elected repre- sentatives, directly responsible to the ratepayers ; and the local authority should be given a locus standi before the Commis- sioners, and some direct relation to the Trustees. As for the Allotments Act itself, it is clear that it needs amendment in the direction of stringency. Meanwhile, however, the Com- missioners ought not to be whitewashed, as they have partially been, by the Select Committee. There is no doubt they have not worked the Act as they ought to have worked it. But as they now have " seisin "of the matter, and have been awakened to a sense of their responsibilities, it would be undesirable to devolve their duties on any one else. The Act needs extension to all Charity-lands, and ultimately, we may hope, to ecclesias- tical lands also. It opens the one practical loophole of escape for the labourer from the condition of a landless man. Fairly and freely worked, it would effect a beneficent revolution in the condition of the agricultural population, and would doubly benefit the country,—first, by reducing pauperism through self- help and industry ; and next, by largely increasing the fund for relieving real misfortune, and above all, for promoting education.
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