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. FREEHOLD LAND SOCIETIES: THEIR HISTORY, PRESENT POSITION, AND CLAIMS. BY 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. ADVERTISEMENT. 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. FREEHOLD LAND SOCIETIES: THEIR HISTORY, PRESENT POSITION, AND CLAIMS.