52 COTTAGE ARCHITECTURE AND COTTAGES. 



lodger, do not scruple to commit acts in the presence of each other which 

 even savages hide from the eyes of their fellows !" 



The demoralizing agency of defective cottage arrangement is one 

 great cause of the low condition of the morals of the inhabitants of 

 our large towns. Ranges of houses are run up, far too large for the 

 occupancy of a single family, or so small and so completely disfur- 

 nished of conveniences, that domestic privacy cannot exist ; and 

 this gives rise to a coarseness of feeling and acting, which is one great 

 step towards vice; for, let philosophers and political economists say 

 what they will, coarseness of manners inevitably leads to coarseness 

 of acting Emollit mores nee sinit esseforos. 



This mode of cottage building in large and crowded towns has the 

 excuse by the owners of property, that land is too valuable to be thinly 

 covered ; and the builder who heaps up a crumbling mass of brick 

 and mortar goes, we suppose, upon the principle that society is 

 comfort and acts accordingly. But, in retired rural districts, land 

 is cheap enough, and stone, or wood, and labour are quite as cheap ; 

 and yet what primitive affairs are thousands of our cottage houses ! 

 Even in England, a vast improvement remains to be made in the re- 

 sidences of the agricultural labourers ; and in Ireland, the very men- 

 tion of a cottar's cabin at once conveys to the mind a picture of all 

 that is filthy and disgraceful ; nor are things any great degree better 

 among the peasantry of Scotland. The houses called Hinds' houses 

 are wretched hovels, and are scarcely fit for lodging pigs or donkies; 

 such dwellings have rarely more than a single room, however large 

 the family, and have neither ceiling nor floor, so that the cattle are, 

 in a general way, actually better lodged than their keepers. 



It has always appeared to us extraordinary, that the owners of pro- 

 perty, especially in rural districts, were so blind to the obvious 

 moral evils which inevitably flow from the disgraceful system of 

 lodging their labourers. It has not, in many instances, the excuses 

 of economy, and thus, in place of seeing an orderly and neat arrange- 

 ment of cottages, we often see a set of dirty, unhealthy, and barbarous 

 looking huts, fitter for New-Zealanders than for Englishmen in the 

 nineteenth century ; nay, we do not hesitate to say, that we could 

 find thousands of cottages which our Saxon forefathers would have 

 thought unworthy of being the winter homes for their herds of swine. 



The effects produced upon the moral and social condition of the de- 

 graded and pauperized agricultural labourer by giving him a decent 

 home, have been abundantly exemplified. Mr. Marriage, a practical 

 man, built several cottages some years ago, and a vast amendment 

 soon took place in the conditions of the tenant. He says, " they soon 

 appreciated the comfort and accommodation they experienced ; the 

 women were enabled to keep their houses clean, and the husbands, 

 finding comfortable homes to go to, repaired to them on leaving 

 their work." 



" In the construction of cottages (says Mr. Smith), economy and 

 domestic convenience in the arrangement, with strength in the qua- 

 lity of the materials, must be the chief points kept in view, and from 

 these will spring cleanliness, comfort, and convenience." After this, 

 he proceeds to give a series of plans, elevations, and estimates, plain, 



