disciples. Allori became one of the foremost of this school.
His pictures are distinguished by their close adherence to
nature and the delicacy and technical perfection of their
execution. His technical skill is proved by the fact that
several copies he made after Correggio have been taken to be
duplicates by Correggio himself. His extreme fastidiousness
limited his power of production, though the number of his works
is not so small as is sometimes asserted. Several specimens
are to be seen at Florence and elsewhere. The finest of
all his works is his ``Judith and Holofernes,'' in the Pitti
Palace. The model for the Judith was his mistress, the beautiful
Mazzafirra, who is also represented in his Magdalene; and the
head of Holofernes is generally supposed to represent himself.
ALLOTMENT from O. Fr. a and loter, to divide by
lot), the act of allotting; a share or portion assigned.
In England, the term denotes a portion of land assigned
on partition or under an inclosure award (see COMMONS);
also a division of land into small portions for cultivation
by a labourer or artisan at a small rent (see ALLOTMENTS
AND SMALL HOLDINOS). In company law, ``allotment'' is
the appropriation to an applicant by a resolution of the
directors of a certain number of shares in response to an
application. The document sent to such an applicant, which
announces the number of shares assigned and concludes the
contract, is called a letter of allotment or allotment
certificate. A letter of allotment in England requires a
sixpenny stamp if the value of the shares amounts to L. 5 or
over, and a penny stamp if less than L. 5. (See COMPANY.)
Allotment note is a writing by a seaman authorising his
employers to make an allotment of part of his wages, while he
is on a voyage, in favour either of a ``near'' relative (wife,
father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, child, grandchild,
brother or sister of the seaman), or of a savings bank. Every
allotment note must be in a form sanctioned by the Board of Trade.
ALLOTMENTS AND SMALL HOLDINGS. As the meaning of these
terms in agricultural tenure varies in different localities,
it may be as well to say at once that for the present purpose
they are definable as pieces of land detached from cottages,
and hired or owned by labouring men to supplement their main
income. We do not include any farm, however small, from
which the occupier derives his entire support by dairying,
market-gardening, or other form of la petite culture. So,
also, no account is taken of the tiny garden plot, used for
growing vegetables for the table and simple flowers, which
is properly an appurtenance of the cottage. Clearing away
what is extraneous, the essential point round which much
controversy has raged is the labourer's share in the land.
The claim advanced depends upon tradition. In agriculture,
the oldest of all industries, a cash payment is not even now
regarded as discharging the obligations between master and
servant. Mr Wilson Fox, in reporting to the Board of Trade on
the earnings of agricultural labourers in Great Britain, gives,
as a typical survival of an old custom, the case of a shepherd
whose total income was calculated at L. 60 a year, but who got
only L. 16 in money, the rest being made up by rights of grazing
live-stock, growing crops on his master's land, and kindred
privileges. That is exactly in the spirit that used to pervade
agriculture, and doubtless had its origin in the manorial
system. If we turn back to the 13th century, from Walter of
Henley's Husbandry it will be seen that practically there
were only two classes engaged in agriculture, and corresponding
with them were two kinds of land. There were, on the one
hand, the employer, the lord, and his demesne land; on the
other, the villeins and the land held in villenage. Putting
aside for the moment any discussion of the exact degree of
servitude, it will be seen that the essence of the bargain was
that the villein should be permitted to cultivate a virgate of
land for his own use in return for service rendered on the home
farm. This is not altered by the fact that the conditions
approached those of slavery, that the villeins were adscripti
glebae, that in some cases their wives and sons were bequeathed
by deed to the service of religious houses, and that in many
other respects their freedom was limited. Out of this, in
the course of centuries, was developed the system prevailing
to-day. Lammas lands are indeed a survival from it. There
are in the valley of the Lea, and close to London, to take one
example, lands allotted annually in little strips till the
crops are carried, when, the day being fixed by a reeve, the
land becomes a common pasture till the spring closing takes
place once more. Perhaps the feature of this old system
that bears most directly on the question of allotments was
the treatment of the waste of the manor. The lord, like his
tenants, was limited by custom as regards the number of
beasts he could graze on it. After the havoc of the Black
Death in 1349, many changes were necessitated by the scarcity
and dearness of labour. It became less unusual for land
to be let and for money payment to be accepted instead of
services. There was a great demand for wool, and to conduct
sheep-farming on a large scale necessitated a re-arrangement
of the manor and the enclosure of many common fields under
the statute of Merton and the statute of Westminster the
Second. Nevertheless, up to the 18th century, a vast proportion
of agricultural land was technically waste, on which rights
of common were exercised by yeomen, some of whom had acquired
holdings by the ordinary methods of purchase or inheritance,
while others had merely squatted and built a house on the
waste. It is to this period that belongs a certain injustice
to which the peasantry were subject. No reasonable doubt
can be entertained of the necessity of enclosure. Husbandry,
after long stagnation, was making great advance; and among
others, Arthur Young raised his voice against the clumsy
inconvenient common fields that were the first to be enclosed.
Between 1709 and 1797 no fewer than 3110 acts, affecting, as
far as can be calculated, about 3,000,000 acres, were put into
operation. They seem mostly to have been directed to the common
fields. In the first half of the 19th century the movement
went on apace. In a single year, 1801, no fewer than 119
acts were passed; and between 1801 and 1842 close on 2000
acts were passed---many of them expressly directed to the
enclosure of wastes and commons. The same thing continued till
1860. It touched the peasant directly and indirectly. The
enclosure of the common fields proved most hurtful to the
small farmer; the enclosure of the waste injured the labourer
by depriving him, without adequate compensation, of such
useful privileges as the right to graze a cow, a pig, geese
or other small animals. It also discouraged him by tending
to the extinction of small tenancies and freeholds that were
no longer workable at a profit when common rights ceased
to go with them. The industrious labourer could previously
nourish a hope of bettering his condition by obtaining a small
holding. Yet though the labourer suffered, impartial study
does not show any intentional injustice. He held a very
weak position when those interested in a common affixed to
the church door a notice that they intended to petition.
As Mr Cowper (afterwards Lord Mount Temple) said in the
House of Commons on the 13th of March 1844, ``the course
adopted had been to compensate the owner of the cottage to
whom the common right belonged, forgetting the claims of
the occupier by whom they were enjoyed''; and in the same
debate Sir Robert Peel pointed out that not only the rights
of the tenant, but those of his successors ought to have been
studied. The course adopted divorced the labourer from the soil.
Parliament, as a matter of fact, had from a very early
period recognized the wisdom of contenting the peasant.
In the 14th century the labourer lived in rude abundance.
Next century a rural exodus began, owing to the practice of
enclosing the holdings and turning them into sheep walks.
In 1487 an act was passed enjoining landlords to ``keep up
houses of husbandry,'' and attach convenient land to them.
Within the next hundred years a number of similar attempts
were made to control what we may call the sheep fever of the
time. Then we arrive at the reign of Elizabeth and the famous
Small Holdings Act passed in 1597--an anticipation of the
three-acres-and-a-cow policy advocated towards the end of
the 19th century. It required that no person shall ``build,
convert or ordain any cottage for habitation or dwelling
for persons engaged in husbandry'' unless the owner ``do
assign and lay to the same cottage or building four acres of
ground at the least.'' It also provided against any ``inmate
or under-sitter'' being admitted to what was sacred to one
family. This measure was not conceived in the spirit of
modern political economy, but it had the effect of staying
the rural exodus. It was repealed in 1775 on the ground
that it restricted the building of cottages. By that time
the modern feeling in favour of allotments had begun to
ripen, and it was contended that some compensation should be
made to the labourers for depriving them of the advantages
of the waste. Up to then the English labouring rustic had
been very well off. Food was abundant and cheap, so were
clothes and boots; he could graze his cow or pig on the
common, and also obtain fuel from it. Now he fell on evil
days. Prices rose, wages fell, privileges were lost, and in
many cases he had to sell the patch of land whose possession
made all the difference between hardship and comfort. All
this was seen plainly enough both by statesmen and private
philanthropists. One of the first experiments was described
by Sir John Sinclair in a note to the report of a select
committee of the House of Commons on waste lands in 1795.
About 1772 the lord of the manor of some commonable lands
near Tewkesbury had with great success set out 25 acres in
allotments for the use of some of the poor. Sir John was very
much struck with the result, and so heartily applauded the idea
that the committee recommended that any general enclosure bill
should have a clause in it providing for ``the accommodation
of land.'' Sir Thomas Bernard and W. Wilberforce took an
active part in advocating the principle of allotments, on the
ground, to summarize their argument in language employed
later by a witness before the House of Commons, that ``it
keeps the cottagers buoyant and makes them industrious.'' In
1806, at the suggestion of the rector, a clause assigning an
allotment of half an acre to every cottage was inserted in an
enclosure bill Wiltshire. This was done, ``and the example
was followed by nearly every adjoining parish in that part of
Wiltshire. Passing over several praiseworthy establishments
of allotments by private persons, we come to 1819, when
parliament passed an act akin in spirit to several that came
into existence during the later portion of the Victorian
era. It empowered the churchwardens and overseers of any
parish, with the consent of the vestry, to purchase or hire
land not exceeding 25 acres, and to let it in portions to
``any poor and industrious inhabitant of the parish.'' This
was amended in 1831 by an act extending the quantity of land
enable the same authorities to enclose from any waste or
common, land not exceeding 50 acres to be devoted to the same
