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endeavouring to live on his small place of ten or twenty acres is too often a warning and example to all who would set at defiance the practical facts of rural economy. It is a deplorable sight to witness a hard-working, industrious labourer, who has saved a little money, endeavour thus to carry on a life of struggle and rags, by depending entirely on the resources of la petite culture; but under all this fallacy is a germ of truth, thus applicable: If a landlord will allot to a few of his cottages at first (or later to as many as half or more) a few acres of grass land, say from three to five, enough to keep a cow or two, making always a previous condition that the cottager shall have saved a few pounds, he will find that the incitement to obtain these small privileges will act most beneficially as an inducement to saving money upon the whole population. He will find, if careful in the selection of his tenants, that no greater natural means of raising the agricultural labourer is to be found than the granting of these small plots of land. It is at once an investment and a source of income to the cottager, and that at no very great outlay by the landlord; but these two conditions must be always peremptorily observed. First, the cottager must have previously saved by his own exertions a few pounds, say 10l. or 20l., else ruin and failure will ensue through the accidental loss of a cow, and the absence of previously formed habits of thrift. Secondly, the land must be let to agricultural day labourers, not to petty farmers who design to live or rather starve on the place; the profits are then made by the wife without interfering with the weekly wages of the labourer. As much as 10l. yearly net profit may be made in this way from the possession of one cow, and it is impossible to reckon the amount of self-respect and self-reliance thereby superinduced.
(3.) Work.—Without going as far as Hampshire or Berkshire or Devonshire, there are few agricultural districts where work is not slack in winter as compared with the summer. Some day machinery may come to compensate the vacuum; but meanwhile there is a very simple way in which landlords may, on the strictest economic principles, do much to afford relief. There is hardly a parish or an estate in England where draining, road-making, and other permanent improvements are not, more or less, urgently required, and it is in winter that such works may be best undertaken. If landlords would take the trouble, either by borrowing money or more cheaply out of income, to push forward such works in their several neighbourhoods, very timely relief might be afforded in those cases where labourers are employed only during the summer months, and heartlessly thrown on the rates in the winter. If it would be an argument or inducement in the case, it might be known that the amount of money spent in rate? could be saved to the ratepayers, but that is a narrow view of the whole question, that ought to be beneath the consideration of men in the position of English landlords.
The great secret of raising the poor is somehow to teach them self-reliance and thrift. If, by reducing the temptation to the beershop, encouraging sound friendly societies, and making opportunities for investment of savings as a landlord can, the lesson and example
