a number uniting to purchase lands and
houses for after distribution, is a system almost as old as the hills.
The earliest record we have of a local Building Society dates from 1781,
though no documents are at hand to show its methods of working. On Jan.
17, 1837, the books were opened for the formation of a Freehold Land and
Building Society here, but its usefulness was very limited, and its
existence short. It was left to the seething and revolutionary days of
1847-8, when the Continental nations were toppling over thrones and
kicking out kings, for sundry of our men of light and leading to bethink
themselves of the immense political power that lay in the holding of the
land, and how, by the exercise of the old English law, which gave the
holder of a 40s. freehold the right of voting for the election of a
"knight of the shire," such power could be brought to bear on
Parliament, by the extension of the franchise in that direction. The
times were out of joint, trade bad, and discontent universal, and the
possession of a little bit of the land we live on was to be a panacea
for every abuse complained of, and the sure harbinger of a return of the
days when every Jack had Jill at his own fireside. The misery and
starvation existing in Ireland where small farms had been divided and
subdivided until the poor families could no longer derive a sustenance
from their several moieties, was altogether overlooked, and "friends of
the people" advocated the wholesale settlement of the unemployed English
on somewhat similar small plots. Feargus O'Connor, the Chartist leader,
started his National Land Society, and thousands paid in their weekly
mites in hopes of becoming "lords of the soil;" estates here and there
were purchased, allotments made, cottages built, and many new homes
created. But as figs do not grow on thistles, neither was it to be
expected that men from the weaving-sheds, or the mines, should be able
to grow their own corn, or even know how to turn it into bread when
grown, and _that_ Utopian scheme was a failure. More wise in their
generation were the men of Birmingham: they went not for country
estates, nor for apple orchards or turnip fields. The wise sagaciousness
of their leaders, and the Brums always play well at "follow my leading,"
made them go in for the vote, the full vote, and nothing but the vote.
The possession of a little plot on which to build a house, though really
the most important, was not the first pa