THE LABOUR INSTITUTION. 4J 



to the value of twenty shillings upon any one occasion, and this pro- 

 hibitory rule goes therefore to defeat the purpose for which the in- 

 stitution was established. To fulfil the objects of the establishment,, 

 the rule ought rather to have prohibited the deposit of goods in value 

 exceeding the sum of twenty shillings, when the counters of the 

 bazaar would no longer be loaded with the refuse stock of the metro- 

 politan shopkeepers, to the exclusion of the produce of the labour of 

 the mechanics, for whose benefit the subscriptions of the public have 

 founded the Bazaar. 



We are of opinion, however, that persons engaged in the mecha- 

 nical trades are not those who in reality require assistance from public 

 institutions, such as this Labour Bazaar. For the condition of the 

 operatives in towns is always immeasurably superior to that of 

 labourers upon farms, on the roads, or in other agricultural employ- 

 ments ; for there are few sober carpenters or smiths who even in these 

 times of difficulty cannot be furnished with three times more of the 

 comforts of existence than the mass of the agricultural labourers of 

 England ; the anguish of whose condition has given rise to the incen- 

 diary fires of the last three miserable years. We can venture to 

 assure Mr. Owen that the project for the extensive employment of 

 labourers of the country in cultivation by the spade, will be abund- 

 antly more effective for the removal of poverty from the industrious 

 classes, than the exchanging of shoes and waistcoats in the Gray's- Inn 

 Road ; since the one would undoubtedly increase the solid produc- 

 tions of the earth, and the real comforts of the labourer, whilst the 

 other is a merely nugatory operation, attended with the disadvantage 

 of " pursuing to destruction" one of the largest bodies of the indus- 

 trious classes themselves. We consider the views of Mr. Owen upon 

 the subject of spade-husbandry to be indeed the best and the only 

 really advantageous portion of his scheme ; for the experiments of the 

 last few years have abundantly proved, that the labour of man is in 

 reality in this populous country more economical than the labour of 

 the horse or the ox, whilst the annual crops of the country may be 

 more than quintupled by the adoption of the spade. The small allot- 

 ments of land which our alarmed aristocracy are now granting to the 

 labourers of the country, will not only produce the most beneficial 

 consequences upon the condition of our rural population, but will im- 

 measurably increase the rental of the land, owing to the extraordinary 

 increase of the crop the result of garden cultivation. Thus we 

 know an instance upon the estate of the Duke of B., where twenty- 

 four acres have been recently subtracted from a farm paying a rental 

 of only eleven shillings per acre, and are now subdivided into twelve 

 small tenements of two acres each, for which the labouring occupants 

 can very advantageously pay a rental of two pounds per acre. We 

 can also testify to the sale of carrots to the value of seventy pounds 

 from a single acre of land by spade cultivation. We trust, therefore, 

 that these subdivisions of land are destined to become universal, 

 assisted by the forthcoming change in the equalizing spirit of our 

 reformed institutions, as exhibited by the abolition of the law of pri- 

 mogeniture, and the other aristocratical portions of our legislation, 



