Founded | provisionally 1846 |
---|---|
Defunct | 1851 |
Fate | Wound up by Act of Parliament |
Successor | Court of Chancery |
Headquarters | London |
Key people | Feargus O'Connor |
The National Land Company was founded as the Chartist Co-operative Land Company in 1845 by the chartist Feargus O'Connor to help working-class people satisfy the landholding requirement to gain a vote in county seats in Great Britain. It was wound up by Act of Parliament by 1851.
The Reform Act of 1832 extended the franchise. In county constituencies in addition to forty shilling freeholders franchise rights were extended to owners of land in copyhold worth £10 and holders of long-term leases (more than sixty years) on land worth £10 and holders of medium-term leases (between twenty and sixty years) on land worth £50 and to tenants-at-will paying an annual rent of £50.
The chartists had, as one of their objectives, the enfranchisement of the working man. O'Connor focussed his energies on enabling working-class people to satisfy the landholding requirement to gain a vote in county seats. In his single minded pursuit of this objective he diverged from the mainstream of Chartism.
O’Connor declared that Great Britain could support her own population if her lands were properly cultivated. [1] As has been pointed out, he had no use for co-operative tillage; his plan was for peasant proprietorship. In his book 'A Practical Work on the Management of Small Farms' [2] he set forth his plan of resettling surplus factory workers on little holdings of from one to 4 acres (16,000 m2). He held that the only possible way to raise wages was to remove surplus labour out of the manufacturers' reach, and thus compel him to offer higher wages. He had no doubts of the yields obtainable under such spade-husbandry.
O'Connor proposed an enterprise in which working men could purchase land on the open market. The land was to be reconditioned, broken up into small plots, equipped with appropriate farm buildings and a cottage, and the new proprietor was to be given a small sum of money with which to buy stock. The plan was approved at the Chartist conference in April 1845. [2]
The form of the company was problematic. A set of rules were drawn up for a friendly society and submitted for approval in January 1846. They were rejected. Another set of rules were submitted and again rejected in July 1846. The company was provisionally registered as a joint stock company, the Chartist Co-operative Land Company, on 24 October 1846. The provisional registration allowed the company to enrol shareholders and to collect deposits on the shares. It did not allow any trading activity, nor the purchase, contracting for purchase, or holding of land. In order to complete the registration it was necessary to collect the signatures of one quarter of the shareholders.
The company was renamed to the National Co-operative Land Company on 17 December 1846, and its stated objectives were expanded. The registration was still on a provisional basis. [2]
Among the joint auditors of the Land Company were tailors and Chartists William Cuffay and James Knight. [3]
As well as the obvious defects in O’Connor's land plan that he either did not see or consider important, there were flaws in the execution:
Flaws such as these were heavily emphasised by early historians. However, since the 1990s several studies of the Chartist Land Company have advanced more-positive interpretations that help to clarify why the scheme was so popular. [6] It has even been suggested that the National Land Company was a benchmark - sometimes positive, sometimes less so - for subsequent UK land reformers. [7]
Money came in at a remarkable rate, considering the poverty of most of the subscribers. [5] The subscribers who got the land were chosen by ballot. They were to pay back with interest and ultimately all subscribers would be settled. [8] The Labourer magazine was started by O’Connor and Jones to promote the project. Soon hundreds of households were settled, and an outcry of opposition went up from hostile Chartists, the press, the Poor Law authorities who feared the weight of their failures, and other quarters.
Among the working men the prestige of Chartism was growing again. The land plan offered more immediate promise of help than the Charter with its long-range promises. O’Connor's carelessness and inaccuracy with financial matters, as well as the free hand he had in purchasing land as he saw fit, were inherent weaknesses in the administration of the scheme. [4] The plan would have soon collapsed had he not been an able promoter.
In the same year O’Connor ran for parliament again and won over Hobhouse for the Nottingham seat. When he had taken his seat he proposed in The Labourer that the government take over the National Land Company to resettle the English peasantry on a large scale. [9] His opposition within the Chartist movement accused him of being "no longer a 'five-point' Chartist but a 'five acre' Chartist". [10] O’Connor replied to his critics in an appearance before a mass meeting of his partisans in Manchester. His followers demonstrated at this meeting how devoted they were to him.
The efforts to establish the company as a friendly society or as a joint stock company had foundered. The effort to collect the signatures of the shareholders was abandoned in 1848. (Later investigation showed that the required number of signatures had been reached, but the company failed to appreciate the difference between the number of shares and the number of shareholders.) [2]
In the meantime, in April 1848, a new petition to have the NLC registered as a friendly society was produced with about 6 million signatures, but an investigating committee in Parliament found that it contained not quite 2 million bonafide signatures. This came as a shock to O’Connor since his lieutenants had not let him know that all was not in order. However, lieutenants such as Cuffay dismissed O'Connor's concerns about the veracity of some signatures, asserting that it mattered little what the exact number of signatures were, but that a sufficient number of signatures had been found to "demand attention from any government." [11] [12]
O'Connor introduced a bill to legalise the NLC, with a second reading set for 12 June 1848. This prompted some investigation, led by Sir Benjamin Hall, which quickly turned up the fact that O'Connor was registered as the owner of all the estates, and of the associated bank. This prompted the House of Commons to set up a Select Committee to look into the NLC on 24 May 1848. [2]
The Select Committee issued minutes of its hearings, and then a final report on 1 August, delivered in the House on 31 July. Its principal findings were:
The illegality of the company, and the need to wind it up, exposed the conflicting interests of the four groups involved.
After a number of court cases an act to wind-up the company was passed by parliament in July 1851 and all its affairs were passed to the Court of Chancery. The settled shareholders mostly disappear from the records of the estates in the years following, and the estates themselves were auctioned off. Many of the properties are extant, some listed or in conservation areas.
51°38′24.94″N0°31′12.17″W / 51.6402611°N 0.5200472°W
Also called O'Connorville.
103 acres (0.42 km2) of land at Heronsgate, Hertfordshire were bought in March 1846 [14] for £2344. [2] The plots were allocated by ballot of the 1487 eligible shareholders on 20 April 1846 (Easter Monday) in Manchester; 17 2-acre (8,100 m2) plots; 5 3-acre (12,000 m2) plots; and 14 4-acre (16,000 m2) plots. An exhibition day was held on 17 August 1846 which started with a march from the west-end of Oxford Street (now Marble Arch). The allotees [15] moved in on 1 May 1847 (Location Day). After the company was wound up, the estate was auctioned on 27 May 1857. By 1858 only three of the original allotees remained, two of whom had rural backgrounds. The influx of more affluent residents provided a market for the produce of the poorer residents. [2]
51°58′53″N2°19′44″W / 51.981285°N 2.328973°W
170 acres (0.69 km2) of land at Lowbands in Redmarley D'Abitot, Worcestershire (now in Gloucestershire) [16] was bought in October 1846 [14] for £8100. [2]
Compared to Heronsgate: water was more readily available, lime was half the price, sand was free for the taking, labour was cheaper at 10s/week, and bricks were 17s per 1000 cheaper. [2] The ballot was held on 1 August 1846. [15] The estate comprised 15 2-acre (8,100 m2) plots; 8 3-acre (12,000 m2) plots; 23 4-acre (16,000 m2) plots; a 10-acre (40,000 m2) water meadow; and a common, "Forty Green". A visiting day was held on 28 May 1847, and Location Day was 16 August 1847. A second visiting day was held on 12 June 1848 (Location Day for Snigs End). After the company was wound up, the estate was auctioned on 2 June 1858. [2]
51°57′33″N2°18′13″W / 51.959156°N 2.303739°W
268 acres (1.08 km2) of land at Snig's End in Staunton, near Gloucester, and partly in Corse, Gloucestershire was bought on 5 June 1847 [14] [17] for £11000. The purchase was completed in October 1847. The ballots [15] were held through the autumn of 1847 for the plots, 35 2-acre (8,100 m2) plots; 12 3-acre (12,000 m2) plots; 35 4-acre (16,000 m2) plots. A procession through Cheltenham was held on 10 January 1848. Location day was on 12 June 1848, while the Select Committee was still inquiring into the NLC. [2]
51°47′31″N1°32′50″W / 51.791948°N 1.54727°W
Also called Charterville.
300 acres (1.2 km2) of land at Minster Lovell [16] in Oxfordshire was bought on 24 June 1847 [14] for £10878. The estate straddled the Cheltenham to Oxford and Witney to Brize Norton roads, removing the need to provide roads on the estate. Construction began on 21 August 1847 and neared completion by the end of the year. Unlike the other estates which had a formal Location Day, [15] Minster Lovell was occupied piecemeal through the summer of 1848. [2]
52°21′17″N2°05′58″W / 52.354766°N 2.099547°W
280 acres (1.1 km2) of land at Great Dodford, Worcestershire [16] was bought in the winter of 1847/8 for £10350, with a £5000 mortgage. The Select Committee report had been issued before the plots were allocated, effectively forbidding the continued use of lotteries to allocate the plots. A quarter of the estate was assigned to winners from previous ballots, and the rest was assigned by auction, which they called a "bonus" system. The average winning bonus was £75. The bonus system robbed the poor, who had been the NLC's greatest backers, of any hope of getting a plot and precipitated the decline of the NLC. [2]
Location day was set for 12 May 1849, then pushed back to 2 July 1849. Some families arrived much earlier. Three families were reported as applying for parish relief as early as 8 February. [2]
The failure of the tenants to pay any rent forced O'Connor to put the estate up for auction on 15 April 1850. Only three lots sold at the auction, and another three by private contract later. [2]
One of the cottages, Rosedene, is owned and maintained by the National Trust, and is open to visitors by appointment. [18]
52°06′36″N2°23′23″W / 52.10988°N 2.38983°W
The land at Mathon, Worcestershire (now Herefordshire), was planned, a deposit placed, but never carried through. [2]
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country and the South Wales Valleys, where working people depended on single industries and were subject to wild swings in economic activity. Chartism was less strong in places, such as Bristol, that had more diversified economies. The movement was fiercely opposed by government authorities, who finally suppressed it.
Feargus Edward O'Connor was an Irish Chartist leader and advocate of the Land Plan, which sought to provide smallholdings for the labouring classes. A highly charismatic figure, O'Connor was admired for his energy and oratory, but was criticised for alleged egotism. His newspaper Northern Star (1837–1852) was widely read among workers, becoming the voice of the Chartist movement.
The Lancaster and Carlisle Railway was a main line railway opened between those cities in 1846. With its Scottish counterpart, the Caledonian Railway, the Company launched the first continuous railway connection between the English railway network and the emerging network in central Scotland. The selection of its route was controversial, and strong arguments were put forward in favour of alternatives, in some cases avoiding the steep gradients, or connecting more population centres. Generating financial support for such a long railway was a challenge, and induced the engineer Joseph Locke to make a last-minute change to the route: in the interests of economy and speed of construction, he eliminated a summit tunnel at the expense of steeper gradients.
Broadgate is a large, 32-acre (13 ha) office and retail estate in the Bishopsgate Without area of the City of London. It is owned by British Land and GIC and managed by Savills.
The Russia Tower was a skyscraper project planned for the Moscow International Business Center in Moscow, Russia. It was started but eventually was cancelled due to the financial crisis of 2007–2008. It was replaced by the Neva Towers project.
Bonnycastle is a neighborhood four miles (6 km) southeast of downtown Louisville, Kentucky USA. It is considered a part of a larger area of Louisville called The Highlands. Its boundaries are Bardstown Road, Cherokee Road, Eastern Parkway and Speed Avenue.
French Azilum was a planned settlement built in 1793 in Bradford County, Pennsylvania for French refugees fleeing the French Revolution and slave uprisings in Saint-Domingue. Several influential Philadelphians, including Stephen Girard, Robert Morris and John Nicholson, Pennsylvania's comptroller general, were sympathetic to the exiles, and also saw a chance to profit financially.
George Julian Harney was a British political activist, journalist, and Chartist leader. He was also associated with Marxism, socialism, and universal suffrage.
William Cuffay was a Chartist leader in early Victorian London.
Dodford is a village in the Bromsgrove district of Worcestershire, England, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Bromsgrove, officially founded on 2 July 1849 by members of the Chartist movement. It was one of five settlements created in the land scheme and retains a characteristic grid street plan, along with narrow lanes and many plum and pear trees from its market gardening past. The civil parish of Dodford with Grafton has a population of 731.
Bedwellty House is a Grade II-listed house and gardens in Tredegar, in the Sirhowy Valley in south-east Wales. It was built in the early 19th century on the site of an earlier building and subsequently enlarged into its present form by mid-century. The owners donated the house and its grounds to the public at the beginning of the 20th century. They were restored at the beginning of the 21st century. The grounds are included on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, the only estate so listed in Blaenau Gwent.
Heronsgate is a settlement on the outskirts of Chorleywood, Hertfordshire founded by Feargus O'Connor and the Chartist Cooperative Land Company as O'Connorsville or O'Connorville in 1846.
Corse is a village in the English county of Gloucestershire, next to the village of Staunton. The parish lies on the tongue of land between the River Severn and the River Leadon. It is 6 miles north of Gloucester and 7 miles south-west of Tewkesbury.
The National Land Company was founded in the United Kingdom in 1845 by Feargus O'Connor to help working-class people satisfy the landholding requirement to gain a vote in county seats.
Rancho Buena Ventura was a 26,632-acre (107.78 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Shasta County, California, given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Major Pierson B. Reading (1816–1868). The land grant is named for the former name of the adjacent Sacramento River, Buena Ventura, which meant good fortune in Spanish. The grant extended some nineteen miles on the west side of the Sacramento River, from Cottonwood Creek on the south to Salt Creek on the north, and extended approximately three miles west of the Sacramento River the length of the grant. The grant encompassed present day towns of Anderson, Cottonwood and Redding. This was the northernmost land grant in California; the smaller Rancho Breisgau faced the southernmost portion of the Rancho on the east bank of the river and. Redding, however, was not named for Major Reading; it was named for B. B. Redding, a land agent for the Central Pacific Railroad.
The Shaftesbury Park Estate, commonly known as The Shaftesbury Estate, is a residential estate in Battersea in South London, England. It lies north of Lavender Hill and Clapham Common and east of Clapham Junction railway station.
Rancho Omochumnes, also known as "Rancho Río de los Cosumnes al Norte", was a 18,662-acre (75.52 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Sacramento County, California.
Lawrence Heyworth was a merchant based in Liverpool, England, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby.
Rancho San Juan Capistrano del Camote, translated as, Camote is probably an error in the documents, Camote would be Camate, which referred to the stream that ran through the grant and that in the 19th century was called the Camate according to Walter Murray [1858], or Comatti according to Annie L. Morrison [1917], now called Camatta Creek. The Rancho was a 44,284 acre Mexican land grant in the San Juan Valley, 13.7 miles southeast of Shandon, California in present-day San Luis Obispo County, California.
Dodford Priory in the parish of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire in the current village of Dodford, was a small Augustinian monastery.