s Inn.
April 1853.

FREEHOLD LAND SOCIETIES:
THEIR HISTORY, PRESENT POSITION, AND CLAIMS.

The Freehold Land Movement is the great fact of the age. We propose to
consider it in its origin, its present position as a means of investment
for the middle and working-classes, and in its political and social and
moral bearings. We propose to tell what it has done, and what it seeks
to do. Born of a working-man, it especially aims at the elevation of
working-men. It comes to them, and offers them independence, wealth, and
political power. Conceived in a provincial town, its ramifications now
extend through the land. It demands no mean place in the consideration
of the influences now at work for realising a future brighter and better
than the past. The philosopher, the political economist, and the
philanthropist must alike, then, deem it worthy of serious regard. On
the part of a people, the absence of recklessness and waste is a great
good; but the formation of industrial and economical habits is a still
greater good. From such plain, unpoetical traits of national character
are born the arts and the graces, and all that is civilised and refined
in life. A rich people is not less virtuous, and is certainly far
happier, than a poor one. Therefore we say, let the Freehold Movement
have wide support, for it is a schoolmaster, teaching the path leading
the people of this country to wealth, and to the power and independence
which wealth alone can give. Thus much by way of introduction. That our
readers may fully understand the subject, we shall begin at the
beginning, and explain.

I.--THE CONSTITUTION OF A FREEHOLD LAND SOCIETY.

Some time back the _Times_ asked scornfully, as Pilate of old did
concerning truth, what was a Freehold Land Society. We reply, viewed in
a business light, it is simply a society for the purchase of land. It
involves two commercial principles well understood--that purchasers
should buy in the cheapest market, and that societies can do what
individuals cannot. Till the movement originated, the purchaser of a
small plot of ground had to pay in lawyer's expenses connected with the
purchase frequently as much as he paid for the plot itself. A society
buys a large piece of ground. They make roads through it; they drain it;
they turn it into valuable building-land; they thus raise its value; and
they divide it amongst their members, not at the price at which each
allotment