National Land Company
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.
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.
O'Connor focussed his energies on enabling working-class people to satisfy the landholding requirement to gain a vote in county seats.
O’Connor declared that Great Britain could support her own population if her lands were properly cultivated.
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).
O'Connor proposed an enterprise in which working men could purchase land on the open market.
The provisional registration allowed the company to enrol shareholders and to collect deposits on the shares.
[2] Among the joint auditors of the Land Company were tailors and Chartists William Cuffay and James Knight.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
An exhibition day was held on 17 August 1846 which started with a march from the west-end of Oxford Street (now Marble Arch).
Unlike the other estates which had a formal Location Day,[15] Minster Lovell was occupied piecemeal through the summer of 1848.
[2] The failure of the tenants to pay any rent forced O'Connor to put the estate up for auction on 15 April 1850.
[2] One of the cottages, Rosedene, is owned and maintained by the National Trust, and is open to visitors by appointment.
