reehold Land Societies, which were established
for political objects, had the effect of weaning men from political
reform. They were first started in Birmingham, for the purpose of
enabling men to buy land, and divide it into forty-shilling freeholds,
so that the owners might become electors and vote against the corn-laws.
The corn-laws have been done away with; but the holders of freehold land
still exist, though many of them have ceased to be politicians. "Mr.
Arthur Ryland informs me," said Mr. Holyoake, in a recent paper on
Building Societies, "that in Birmingham, numbers of persons under the
influence of these societies have forsaken patriotism for profits. And I
know both co-operators and Chartists who were loud-mouthed for social
and political reform, who now care no more for it than a Whig
government; and decline to attend a public meeting on a fine night,
while they would crawl like the serpent in Eden, through a gutter in a
storm, after a good security. They have tasted land, and the gravel has
got into their souls."

"Yet to many others," he adds, "these societies have taught a healthy
frugality they never else would have known; and enabled many an
industrious son to take to his home his poor old father--who expected
and dreaded to die in the workhouse--and set him down to smoke his pipe
in the sunshine in the garden, of which the land and the house belonged
to his child."[1]

[Footnote 1: Paper read at York Meeting of the National Society for
Promoting Social Science, 26th Sept. 1864.]

The Leeds Permanent Building Society, which has furnished healthy
tenements for about two hundred families, sets forth the following
recommendations of the influence which it has exercised amongst the
working classes of that town: "It is truly cheering to hear the members
themselves, at occasional meetings tell how, from small savings hitherto
deemed too little for active application, they began to invest in the
society: then to build or buy; then to advance in life, and come to
competence, from extending their savings in this manner.... The
provident habits and knowledge thus induced are most beneficial to the
members. And the result is, that the careless become thoughtful, and, on
saving, become orderly, respectable, propertied, and in every way better
citizens, neighbours, and more worthy and comfortable. The employment of
money in this useful direction encourages trade, advances prices and
wages, comforts the working c