710 Condition of the Labouring Classes. 



the human beings rendered comfortable on these gentlemen's estates; 

 and we repeat, that much as human nature is indebted to them for their 

 benevolence, jet still without a high degree of education their improvement 

 is incomplete, because it does not provide for its own continuance. What 

 is to become of the multitude of children that will be reared up in these 

 comfortable cottages ? They must either be supplied with cottages in their 

 turn, or made citizens of the world by education. By educating these 

 children, so as to give them the capability of emigrating, these benevolent 

 landlords will not only have the satisfaction of having produced much pre- 

 sent comfort, but of furthering the intentions of nature in spreading civili- 

 sation over every portion of the habitable globe, and thus approximating the 

 consummation of that felicity which we must believe to be ultimately in- 

 tended for the whole of human nature even in this world, since by a part of 

 this world we see it already attained. 



The reviewer next gives instances of parishes having let land to labourers 

 who had previously been burthensome to the parish, but who afterwards 

 required no assistance. The greut produce from cultivating a piece of land 

 of only 5 acres, in what is called the Flemish manner, or field -gardening 

 husbandry, is stated from some communications to the Board of Agriculture 

 by vSir Henry Vavaseur. An allotment pf arable soil is very properly stated 

 to be preferable to one of meadow land. We cordially agree in desiring 

 "vehemently, to see the day when every cottager shall be allowed to occupy, 

 at a fair rent, an allotment of land of sufficient extent — not to convert him 

 into a |)etty farmer — not to withdraw him from his regular labour, but to 

 employ him, and more especially his family, during their leisure time." 



With respect to the portion of land necessary for this purpose, we 

 think it may vary in extent from the fourth of an acre to 5 acres, according 

 to a variety of circumstances of a local nature. A fourth of an acre may 

 be the minimum for a labourer who has no cow ; and 5 acres will not be too 

 much for a labourer who has, perhaps, a little capital, and who may produce, 

 with the assistance of his wife, milk and vegetables for sale. Cottagers who 

 are mechanics may, in some situations, find 10, 20, or 30 acres, a desirable 

 acquisition; and in such cases, as in all where the quantity required exceeds 

 an acre or two, the landlord has only to consider what is best for his own 

 interest, always taking that term in an enlightened sense, and looking to 

 permanent as well as temporary advantage. With a high and equal degree 

 of education, we see no reason why this mode of distributing land among 

 the lowest classes in England should not be as productive of general and 

 particular good, as the same mode of distribution is among the labouring 

 classes in some states of Germany, and in Sweden, Norway, and Switzer- 

 land. The good produced in these countries is not great ; the condition 

 of the labouring classes in them is one of poverty, with regard to money, 

 clothes, and luxuries, but not of starvation and hopeless misery. Every 

 family, with scarcely an exception, amongst the lower classes in Bavaria, Wur- 

 temberg, and Baden, possesses a house and more or less land, and, as we have 

 elsewhere {Mag. Nat. Hist., vol.i. p. 482.) stated, though exceedingly poor 

 in point of money, and coarsely clad, yet they iu-e enlightened, very free from 

 crime, and totally without paupers. The condition of the farm servants in 

 the south of Scotland and north of P]ngland, where every married man has 

 a house and garden, a certain quantity of potatoes, wheat, and oats, land 

 for flax, often the keep of a cow, and so many days' labour of a horse and 

 cart to carry home his fuel, is an inferior degree of the same comfort which 

 exists in Wurtembcrg and Bavaria. The condition of these agricultural 

 labourers is greatly superior to that of their brethren in the greater part of 

 England ; because, whatever may be the price of bread corn, potatoes and the 

 produce of a cow and a pig, they have always the same quantity of these ar- 

 ticles. The possession of land not only affords a labourer or mechanic an op- 

 portunity of employing every moment of his leisure time, and of saving what 

 would be spent in idleness or in the alehouse ; but it renders hiui, by the sense 



