fort, the Yorkshire peasantry may be said to be comparatively well off; but there still seems ample room for the improvement of their condition in education and more comfortable housing.
Farm servants in Northumberland, are engaged upon a system different from that which prevails in other parts of England. In the absence of villages (which are rare) to supply occasional assistance, each farm must depend upon its own resources; a necessity is thus created for having a disposable force of boys and women always at command, which is effected in the following manner. Each farm is provided with an adequate number of cottages, having small gardens adjoining, and every man who is engaged by the year has one of these cottages; his family commonly find employment, more or less, but one female laborer he is bound to have always in readiness to answer the master's call for assistance, and to work at stipulated wages. To this engagement the name of bondage is given, and such female laborers are called bondagers; or women who work the bondage.
Of course, where the hind (as such yearly laborer is called) has no daughter or sister competent to fulfil for him this part of his engagement, he has to take his wife to do it, or hire a woman servant; and this, in some sense of the word, may be a hardship to him; but, in the first place, this is not very common; and in the second, the advantages of the system, even with this drawback, are unquestionable. The wages of the laborer are paid chiefly in the produce of the farm, viz: in addition to a cottage and small garden, he has a certain quantity (as per agreement) of wheat, rye, barley, oats, peas, beans, potatoes, wool, &c., with about $20 in money during the year, and the keep of a cow. The wages of the women and children are paid chiefly in money. This system seems to be the best of any in England for agricultural
