Explore "Freehold Land Societies: Their History, Present Position, and Claims" by James Ewing Ritchie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Primarily the movement was political, and was established for the purpose of giving the people of this country the political power which they at present lack. Originally the forty-shilling freehold was established to put down universal suffrage. As a part and parcel of the British constitution it has been religiously preserved to the present time, and threatens to be an excellent substitute for what it was originally intended to destroy. During the Anti-Corn-Law agitation Mr. Cobden had put the free-traders up to the idea of purchasing forty-shilling freeholds, but it was reserved to Mr. James Taylor, of Birmingham, to give to the idea of Mr. Cobden a universality of which the latter never dreamed; Mr. Taylor had been a purchaser of land more than once, and with the purchase he got an abstract, a legal document, which when he came to understand it, showed him that he had paid to the vendor much more than it cost him. The idea then struck him that as the wholesale price of land was much greater than the retail, if the working men could be got to subscribe together a large sum for the purchase of land, they could thus have, at a wholesale price, a stake in the country and a vote, and when the general election came and excitement was created, Mr. Taylor felt that the time for action was arrived. Accordingly, when he went to tender his vote, he said to a friend who accompanied him, "here's a lot of fellows, and all that they can do is to grin and yawn when I go in to poll; I have a strong notion that I can get them into the booth." This friend said, "How?" The answer was, "Meet me to night in the Temperance Hotel." That same evening Mr. Taylor and his friend drew up an advertisement, stating that "it is expedient that a Freehold Land Society be formed for the purpose of obtaining freehold property at a most reasonable cost to, and to get country votes for, the working men." Simultaneously with the advertisement in the local paper appeared a leader from the editor, recognising the immense importance of the movement thus commenced. Thus pledged to go on, Mr. Taylor threw his heart and soul into the cause. Within a week a committee was formed, and the support of the principal men in the town secured. December, 1849 is the legal date of the Freehold Land Movement, although the Birmingham Society had been in existence nearly two years previous. In that month the rules of the society were certified, and the glorious idea of Mr. Taylor had a legal habitation and a name. At the end of the first year the Birmingham society reported that it had established six independent societies, in which more than two thousand members had subscribed for three thousand shares; that in Birmingham alone the subscriptions amounted to 500 pounds per month, and that it had already given allotments to nearly two hundred of its members.