On Tuesday Lord Lansdowne made a speech at the annual
meeting of the Rural Labourers' League, fall of sensible and suggestive things. There was no doubt that small occupiers were good and punctual tenants. Indeed, there was only one drawback to them from the landlord's point of view. Five hundred acres, split into half-acre lots, was a much more difficult property to deal with than five hundred acres divided into two moderate-sized farms, and that had often made him think that it would be a good thing to have an intermediary who would take the land wholesale, and let it out retail to the labourers. No doubt this is true in theory, but as the example of Ireland shows, the middleman is apt to prove rather a curse than a blessing. If, however, the inter- mediary were the Parish Council or a Co-operative Society of Labourers, we do not see why the plan should not. answer. We wish, indeed, that a co-operative experiment in allotments could be tried. Let thirty or forty labourers form a society and take twenty acres from a landlord, let out the land in half and quarter acres to themselves and their neighbours at the rate of the district, and divide the profit's among the members. We believe the experiment would answer, as do other co-operative ventnres, both as an allot- ment provider and as a savings-bank.
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