AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' COTTAGES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE"SPECTATOR:']
SIR, —Will you allow me to illustrate, by some details, your- argument last week in favour of giving the agricultural labourers votes? By a recent return to the House of Commons, it appears that during the last four years the Public Works Loan Commissioners have advanced £83,550 to Companies and indi- viduals in towns, under the provisions of "The Labouring Classes' Dwelling-houses Act, 1866," at £4 per cent. interest, with the principal repayable in forty years, or by a farther yearly payment of £1 ls. during that time ; but to landowners or others for the like purpose in rural districts, no advances whatever appear to have been made from the Treasury. In fact, whatever money has been boirowed by landlords for building cottages for agricultural labourers has been borrowed not of the Treasury, but from commercial Companies, at 41 per cent. interest, and with prin. cipal repayable in twenty-five years by an annual addition to that interest, making altogether a charge of not less than £6 14s. ld. yearly, and for advances smaller than £500, of 7 per cent. And while this difference between £5 ls. and £6 14s. ld. per cent. is not unimportant to a man who—as is the case with most of our country squires—is not only of but moderate means, but has often practically, even when not legally, merely a life-interest in the property, there is this further difference,—that the builders of artisans' dwellings in towns recover the whole, and often more than the whole, of the said 5 per cent. interest from their tenants ; while the country landlord, if he builds cottages fit to live in, rarely gets more than two and a half per cent. towards the six and three- quarters per cent. which he has to pay. But why should this be so ? The squires and their dependents, the agricultural labourers, have as good a claim as have the town philanthropists and their clients, the artisans, to Government aid in the matter. If it be a matter of public policy that Government should advance money for building workmen's dwellings in towns on more favourable terms than can be obtained in the commercial market, this is not less, though not more, true as to agricultural labourers' cottages. Nor does the " Labouring Classes' Dwelling-houses Act, 1866," avowedly give such aid to one class and not the other. Any country gentleman who applies for a loan for building cottages under this Act will find that his claim is at once acknowledged ; only on attempting a second step, he will find that it is not possible for him to comply with the conditions on which the Act authorises the desired loan. The difficulty is this,—the Act of Parliament requires as security for the loan a mortgage either of the buildings and the land they stand on, or of some other land of adequate value. And this, in the case of a Metropolitan, Liverpool, Cardiff, or other company, who have just bought the land for their intended works, and have only to hand over to-day to the Treasury the deeds of which yesterday put them in possession, is a simple and easy matter ; but with the rural landowner it is. quite otherwise. If he is a "limited owner," his estate being in settlement—entailed, as it is popularly called—he cannot execute a mortgage, and has no locus standi at all for his application ; and if he is the absolute owner of his estate, and has the legal power to mortgage his land, -yet practically he cannot, for such a purpose as building cottages, face the unknown but certainly serious expenditure of time and money upon solicitors and counsel, ending with a transfer of his family title-deeds to the Treasury Solicitors for forty years to come. For these—the conditions of an ordinary mortgage—are all required by the Treasury in the supposed case. So he, and what is more important, the labourers on his estate, must go without the cottages, unless he can afford the higher rates of interest and other payments by means of which he can avail himself of the help of the -" Improvement of Land Act, 1864." Under that Act, he can—whether his interest in his land is absolute, or limited to his own life only—give the security of an indefeasible rent-charge, on which money may be safely lent, -without any of the difficulties of investigation of title, deeds of mortgage, and so on. But the Public Works Loan Commissioners are not empowered to take this security, and though the commer- cial Companies willingly take it, they, of course, and very reason.. ably, require commercial rates of interest and repayment. And so, although the Acts of 1864 and 1866 are both intended to facili- tate the building of cottages, neither of them is adequate for the purpose.
Yet the remedy is simple and easy up to a certain point, beyond which would arise questions of public policy in relation to limited ownership with which we do not here meddle. Though each of the Acts we have referred to is by itself inoperative for the pur- pose in question, a very few words embodied in an amending Act would bring the two together, and form an effective measure. The Improvement of Land Act has all the machinery for creating an indefeasible rent-charge, on the security of which landowners, whether limited or absolute, can borrow money for various im- provements of their estates, including that of building labourers' cottages : and all that is required is to say that, for cottage- building only, the term of repayment under this Act may be ex- tended to forty years ; and that the Public Works Loan Commis- sioners may advance the money on the security of a rent-charge so created.
There was indeed a Bill for effecting this object—the " Labourers' Cottages Bill "—before the House of Commons all last Session, with the names of Mr. Morley, Mr. Whitwell, and Mr. Edward Stanhope on the back. But though this co-operation of men of opposite politics showed that it was no mere party measure, the Remainder-men and the Land Improvement Companies were, it was whispered, hostile, and the Government lukewarm ; and so it failed to pass, for want of that "backing by a class strongly re- presented in Parliament" without which, as you justly observe no measure has much chance of passing.—I am, Sir, &c., EDWARD STRACHEY.
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