Freehold Land Societies: Their History, Present Position, and Claims

Transcribed from the 1853 William Tweedie pamphlet by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf. Many thanks to Birmingham Central Library, England, for allowing their copy to be used for this transcription.
J. EWING RITCHIE.
“The laws of this country recognise nothing more sacred than the Forty-shilling Freehold Franchise; and a vote for the county obtained by these means is both constitutional and laudable.”—Lord Chief-Justice Tindal. “What he had heard from hon. members told him nothing more than this, that the working population could easily, under the old system, acquire the right of voting; and that every man who owned forty shillings a-year could entitle himself to vote. Were they to be told that the people of England were so degraded, so besotted, so dead to all sense of their true interests, that they could make no efforts to possess themselves of the franchise?”—Mr. Disraeli.
LONDON: WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND.
price twopence.
The following pages are reprinted from the “Weekly News and Chronicle”—the only Paper that aims to be the organ of the Freehold Land Movement. They are now published in the hope that they may win for that movement a wider support and a heartier sympathy than it has already secured. It is a child—it will be a giant ere long.
3, Clifford’s Inn. April 1853.
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.