328 



The Country Gentlemaiis Magazine 



figures, appeared to be more wages, have 

 found that their comforts were less there, and 

 have returned to the land from whence they 

 came. 



There are three ways in which the Times 

 is of opinion that a new order of things may 

 be brought about — such paradisiacal resorts 

 for the labourers, as their speaking friends 

 paint, created. There are, says our contem- 

 porary, three possible authors ; and here we 

 cannot do better than quote the precise 

 words : — 



The labourer himself ; the landowner ; combina- 

 tion in the form of the Commune, or some voluntary 

 union. As things are, the position is attained by a 

 comparatively few labourers by their own long toil, 

 self-denial, and forethought. They make their own 

 State, be it more or less after the above model. When 

 the ideal is approached, the man who makes also 

 preserves ; and the possession itself becomes a 

 guarantee for the qualities necessary for good 

 management. The proper management of a family 

 is easy to nobody. The proper management of a 

 farm is easy to nobody. The care of cows, pigs, 

 poultry, growing vegetables, fruit trees, good or bad 

 soil, is easy to nobody. Ordinary labourers' work is 

 easy to nobody ; still less extraordinary. It is by 

 no means everybody who can do any one of these 

 things ; while of those who can it is only a proportion 

 that will give themselves the trouble to attend to 

 business and be prompt to meet emergencies. A man 

 may have very good and useful qualities, and yet be 

 an indifferent master of a household, and a bad 

 farmer. Nature may have designed him for a buyer 

 and seller, or a servant, or, in short, for anything else 

 than the care of an agricultural homestead. Upon the 

 whole, we must say with regard to such a domestic 

 establishment as is supposed in these ideals, small as 

 it may seem, few men have the necessary qualifications ; 

 and in the absence of those qualifications, things will 

 go to the bad. The buildings will go to decay ; the 

 sanitary arrangements will be neglected, and thereby 

 be made nuisances ; dirt, v/eeds, slough, rot, and 

 breakage will prevail ; the live stock will fall into 

 bad condition, perhaps die ; the children, tempted to 

 stay at home, will learn nothing but what is bad, and 

 the man himself will fall between two stools, his 

 master's work and his own. . , . Further, what 

 provision is there to be for the disasters as sure to 

 befall husbandry as commerce and everything else ? 

 The smaller tlie stock, the more necessary it is to 

 insure, and the more certain tliat there will be no in- 

 surances. What, then, is to be done in case of fires, 

 murrains, diseases, accidents, blights, droughts, long 

 frosts, losses by robbers, and a thousand other 

 casualties ? 



At present we are not prepared Avith any other 

 answer to the pretty and seductive propositions float- 



ing in tlie very air round us than that we see little 

 encouragement to atlempt any violent change in the 

 state and relations of the Agricultural Labourer. His is 

 a case not for revolution, but for friendly and careful 

 superintendence and assistance. Whether a few of 

 the ideal homesteads in the villages adapted to the 

 experiment would answer as prizes and promotions 

 after a proper ordeal of work and service is a matter 

 that landlords can judge best for themselves. Where 

 the landlord is resident, he generally has the bes 

 men under his eye, and their prospects of employmen 

 in his service for themselves and their children are 

 generally more than equivalent to any precarious 

 profits from petty farming. It may be otherwise 

 where the landlord is not resident. But, in the ab- 

 sence of any positive and ascertained qualification for 

 the management of such a homestead, it is almost cer- 

 tain to be mismanaged, to the injury of the tenant, 

 and still more of others about him. We are told, of 

 course, that landlords will not do the work ; and 

 that it must, therefore, be done for them. It is to 

 be done by companies or wealthy philanthropists. 

 Be it so. Nothing is easier. There are, happily, 

 in these days, persons blessed witli money, benevo- 

 lent motives, and exalted notions. There are 

 plenty of landed estates in the market, in every 

 part of England, from 50 acres to 5000 acres. 

 ;^ioo,ooo will suffice to purchase a very pretty 

 estate, divided into two hundred little farms 

 of the required dimensions. It would not be im- 

 possible to exercise a certain degree of selection 

 among the very numerous applicants whom the pro- 

 jector would certainly find himself face to face with. 

 There would be no model community, on which the 

 world might look with curious and even longing eyes. 

 We, indeed, recommend the munificent author to 

 keep another ^{^100,000 ready for casualties, for 

 in case of need he might find some difficulty in 

 mortgaging the property. But, in plain English, and 

 in the name of common sense, what would it all come 

 to ? Ruin, confusion, misery, hopeless embarrass- 

 ment, the triumph of the rogues, the spoliation of the 

 simple, and before long, as we believe, nothing but 

 ruined cottages, sheds, fences, gates, and roads to 

 mark where once for a short year smiled Utopia. 



With the latter part of the quotation we 

 entirely agree. Comfort in small farms in 

 the present age is a chimera of well meaning, 

 but unpractical theorists. There are still 

 some of these plots left in the United 

 Kingdom, and in the interest of landlord and 

 occupier, as well as in that of the consuming 

 public, the sooner they are agglomerated the 

 better. The farmers on such apportionments 

 are hard-wrought and wretched-looking men, 

 and cannot make the land yield as much as 

 it ought to do, as they have not the means of 

 tilling and manuring it properly. 



