554 



Chapter XLV. 



ON COTTAGE ECONOMY— COTTAGE GARDENS— BEES— ALLOTMENTS 

 OF LAND— SPADE HUSBANDRY. 



In treating of this subject — a subject of the most vital importance to our 

 rural population — one cannot help adverting to the late Mr. Cobbett's cele- 

 brated tract on this topic. That pithy writer drew a strong picture of what 

 the peasantry were in his own early days, and what he wished labourers to 

 be at the time he wrote. It was a picture of what had passed away, rather 

 than a representation of what was still in the labourer's power to do for 

 himself under the great changes which, during the period alluded to, had 

 taken place in the condition, the manner of living, and the moral habits of 

 the rural population. Tlie old English fare of farm servants and cottagers 

 is, over a great part of the kingdom, no longer partaken of: the foreign 

 articles of tea, coffee, sugar, &c., have banished milk and cider, and beer, 

 from these private dwellings; and the domestic duties of brewing and 

 baking are superseded by swarms of public bakers and brewers, who supply 

 these necessaries, and bring them to the doors of the consumers. This 

 convenient supply of necessaries has banished the brewing utensils and the 

 ovens from every cottage and almost from every farm-house. These 

 changes, which take place in such a mixed society of mercantile, manu- 

 facturing, and agricultural classes, which compose the population of this 

 country, are not the results of design ; — they happen in the course of cir- 

 cumstances, which have a relative bearing on each other, and according as 

 convenience, or indolence, or inclination may prompt. 



A very general want of economy, it must be confessed, took place during 

 the war among agricultural labourers, when their wages were so much ad- 

 vanced : their domestic and orderly habits were changed into a kind of 

 recklessness, from which they are now far from being exempt. In this 

 they were encouraged by the state of the poor laws, which certainly made 

 many able-bodied men idle or unemployed paupers. A very general pres- 

 sure of distress was the consequence of the reduction of wages after the 

 war ; and benevolence was on the rack to devise n)eans by which the rural 

 labourer might, by his own e.Nertions, benefit himself, and keep him inde- 

 pendent of the overseers' funds. 



Mr. Cobbett's excellent advice to that class of the community, as to the great 

 saving and comfort of baking their own bread and brewing their own beer, 

 they could not generally avail themselves of, because of the want of vessels, 

 which they were unable to buy, and for the want of ovens, which they could 

 not afford to build. Their poverty prevented them buying a cow, even if 

 thev could hire pasturage for her ; and their employers always disapproved 

 of their keeping pigs, as they were commonly allowed to prowl about the 

 lanes and destroy the farm-fences ; besides their engendering, in many of 

 their owners, a system of pilfering for their support. Mr. Cobbett's 

 advice, therefore, went but a little way in ameliorating the condition of 

 farm-labourers. 



It has indeed been intimated to us, that it would not be economical in the 

 cottager to brew or to bake ; for, "in procuring anything that administers 

 to his necessities, man makes an exchange of his labour for the thing pro- 

 duced, and the less he gives for his labour the better of course is his bar- 



