No. 12. 



Effect of Gardening on the Rural Population. 



375 



among a class of men who could not, in jus 

 tice to their families, afford to buy them, and 

 the natural influence of this has been unfa 

 vourable. Cottagers, with not a shilling be- 

 forehand, have, notwithstanding, shown half- 

 guinea dahlias, and se\ en and sixpenny roses, 

 and two-guinea geraniums, and ten-shilling 

 tulips. These things are highly improper. 

 If they were honestly come by, the money 

 was withdrawn from the family; if not hon- 

 estly come by, the very people who tried to 

 advance the morals have been engendering 

 a vice which must end fatally. A society 

 with proper notions cannot offer premiums 

 for extravagance any more than it can offer 

 rewards for peculation, because one engen 

 ders the other. If a cottager once is made 

 to calculate on beating his rivals by the su 

 periority of his collection, there is an end of 

 all reliance on industry. It matters not whe- 

 ther he begs, borrows, steals, or buys his 

 costly flowers, any or all of them are mis- 

 chievous, and have a bad effect on the morals 

 Raise a man's ambition to produce better car 

 rots, cabbages, potatoes, and useful vegeta- 

 bles than his neighbours, and you will excite 

 the ambition to shine in a right cause. 



Let us observe the effect of a certain 

 county Society on the exhibiting cottagers. 

 Prizes were given for dahlias, roses, tulips, 

 and many other costly subjects perfectly in- 

 consistent with the probable income of the 

 people who were to compete, being persons 

 limited in their rentals to under ten pound.-. 

 There were also prizes for vegetables. One 

 man had won the head prizes for three years, 

 and another, who struggled hard against him 

 for the ascendency, was always just beaten. 

 It chanced that we were judges on one oc- 

 casion — the two rivals were in the field, and 

 both had good flowers — one, however, was 

 apparently well to do, the other very poor. 

 Seeing that there were flowers in both 

 stands very incompatible with the men's ap- 

 parent, or rather their ostensible means, we 

 made searching inquiries into both their 

 means, and found them very different. One 

 had beggared himself, and made away with 

 his own clothes, and neglected his wife's 

 and children's appearance, and spent the 

 money in flowers, — the other had been regu- 

 larly served by a gardener in the neighbour- 

 hood with everything from his master's col- 

 lection, and the said gardener " went halves" 

 in all the cottager gained by showing and 

 selling flowers. In one case, a man had 

 been frugal and well off until a wrong spirit 

 had been aroused by the award of prizes for 

 flowers among men who could not afford to 

 buy them. He had been beaten time after 

 time by better flowers, and resolved to get 

 better still, if possible. He purchased upon 



credit, and paid for them at so much per 

 week, which liad to be withheld from his 

 family; and deprived them of comforts, of 

 respectability, and engendered a sort of in- 

 difference to appearances, that went a long 

 way towards confirmed demoralization, espe- 

 cially as the man, from some cause, neglect- 

 ed one of his payments, and became reckless, 

 and the dealer, seeing he would be likely to 

 lose, took the first steps towards compelling 

 payment. The other, with the sole ambition 

 of beating his fellow — but more humble — 

 brethren, had consented to be the receiver 

 of things stolen from a gentleman's garden, 

 which, perhaps, he never would have thought 

 of but tor the folly of those who awarded 

 prizes to poor men for subjects which are 

 only appropriate to those in good circum- 

 stances. It may be said that the object was 

 only to encourage the growth of common 

 flowers; but where is the limit when the 

 prizes are for the best"? They might as well 

 offer a race-cup for cottagers' horses, and say 

 they meant the cottagers to run only their 

 cart-nags, as to give prizes for the best flow- 

 ers shown, and suppose that all would show 

 common. But there is no excuse for award- 

 ing prizes to cottagers for flowers of any 

 kind (except, perhaps, cauliflowers,) because 

 for cottagers' purposes they are perfectly 

 useless, and for mere ornament to their gar- 

 dens the cottager wants no prize to induce 

 him to cultivate all the flowers he ought to 

 adopt. There is not one good purpose to be 

 attained by inducing cottagers to grow flow- 

 ers. If he loves them, he will get enough 

 for his garden for his own sake ; and if he 

 does not love them, all the time he is in- 

 duced to spend on them is labour instead of 

 amusement; whereas his vegetables ought 

 to be encouraged ; superiority in the culture 

 of them is desirable. Everything that can 

 influence a working man to occupy his time 

 in producing that which is food or money, 

 leads him in the right way. The expense 

 of vegetable seed is comparatively nothing 

 to the value of the food produced. There is 

 no temptation to beg, borrow, steal, or even 

 to buy enough to hurt his home, or deprive 

 his family of their proper clothing and com- 

 fort, so far as his ordinary circumstances per- 

 mits; whereas, if he is induced to lay out 

 crowns for this flower, half-sovereigns for 

 that, and even shillings for the other, he 

 saddles himself with weekly payments which 

 he cannot withhold from his family without 

 curtailing their respectability and endanger- 

 ing their morals. If the mind be broken 

 down by privations, and the pride of neat- 

 ness and cleanliness be wounded for want of 

 the means to indulge it, it soon becomes 

 reckless. The most creditable pride the 



