204 Plan for establishing a Company for the Cultivation 
transmitted to the Select Committee on the Poor Laws * ; and if 
our fields were cultivated in the garden style, the increased pro- 
duce would amply defray the additional expense.” 
That in agricultural parishes the poor may be advantageously 
employed in the cultivation of the soil, seems now to be generally 
recognised}; but the plan which I propose submitting to the con- 
sideration of the public, is of a more extensive nature. The po- 
sition I wish to establish is this, ‘¢ that as the poor in the metro- 
polis and in large towns, cannot be advantageously employed in 
trades and other manual occupations, without injury to others 
whose subsistence depends upon their labour; hence, it has be- 
come a matter of absolute necessity, either to maintain them 
without employment, or to send the able-bodied to work in the 
fields, both for raising food, and for producing materials for ma- 
-nufacture (as flax), more likely to interfere with foreign than do- 
mestic industry, and in which the more infirm poor might be em- 
ployed in work-houses, and that by the adoption of such a sy- 
stem, the burden of maintaining the poor will be materially di- 
minished.”’ 
In discussing this subject, it is proposed to consider the follow- 
ing points: — 1. To what extent is manual labour applicable to 
the cultivation of the soil?—2. What is the probable number of 
persons maintained hy the poor-rates in London and its imme- 
diate vicinity, who could be usefully employed in carrying on 
some great agricultural improvement ?—and 3. What would be 
the best plan for carrying such a measure into effect ? . 
1. To what extent is manual labour applicable to the culti- 
vation of the soil? . 
This is a subject that has frequently been discussed in works on 
agriculture {; but understanding that Mr. Falla, an eminent 
nurseryman at Gateshead, near Newcastle, had recently paid par- 
ticular attention to the cultivation of land by manual labour, I 
applied to him for the result of his experience, which he com- 
municated with the greatest readiness. He states, that on an 
* See the Report of the Select Committee on the Poor Laws, an. 1817, 
Appendix, G, No. 2, p. 164. 
+ “Tn country parishes, agriculture furnishes the most obvious and use~ 
ful source of employment; for, though the whole stock of subsistence be 
thereby increased, yet the cultivator of the land would be more than com- 
pensated for any diminution in the value of his produce, by the correspond- 
ing diminution of the expense of maivtaining his faniily and labourers, and 
the more important reduction of the poor-rate.”—See the valuable Report 
on the Poor Laws, an. 1817, p. 19. 
} See General Report of Scotland, vol. ii, p. 297, where there is an entire 
section on Trenching Land; also, the Code of Agriculture, p. 151 and p. 222, 
note, 
average, 
