140 Cottage Husbandry and Architecture, 



Husbandry, and of Cottage Architecture, outlines of the contents of which 

 works will be found in the advertising sheet to the present Number. To 

 these outlines we earnestly invite the attention of such of our readers as 

 are able and willing to render us any assistance. 



Twenty years ago, during the war, landed proprietors found it most 

 profitable to pull down cottages and to let their lands in large farms ; and 

 that they should follow the course which they found most lucrative was 

 very natural. It is just as natural, in the present tunes, for them to return 

 to the cottage system, in order to save the rent of land from being eaten up 

 by the poor's rate. * It forms no part of our plan to recommend indis- 

 criminately the building of cottages, and the attaching of land to them ; but 

 we do presume to recommend, without any exception, that no cottage 

 should be built without a certain quantity of land being attached to 

 it unalienably ; and that every cottage now existing, and without land, or 

 without one or other of the quantities of land that we shall define as requi- 

 site for certain purposes, have, without delay, as much land added and 

 unalienably attached as makes up the quantity alluded to. We repeat, 

 that, wherever it is deemed proper that a cottage should exist at all, we 

 recommend, without hesitation and without exception, that land be attached 

 to it, and the following are our reasons : — 



1. Every cottager requires, for the consumption and use of his family, a 

 certain quantity of culinary vegetables and fuel. 



2. Every labourer, mechanic, operative manufacturer, or small tradesman, 



* " A system has been acted upon for some years of taking the small 

 farms from the occupants, and adding them to the large farms, already too 

 large in many instances ; hereby, not merely hundreds, but thousands, of 

 honest, industrious, frugal, and hitherto independent, yeomen, with their 

 families, have been turned adrift, and reduced to absolute beggary. Yet, 

 truly deplorable as is this statement, it is not, by any means, the worst part 

 of their case. I am painfully compelled to add, that by thus depriving them 

 of their honourable support, and driving them in crowds to the parish 

 officers for relief, a dreadful injury has been inflicted upon their morals and 

 principles : able healthy men are no longer ashamed of receiving parish 

 relief, even the desire to avoid a workhouse, which was formerly such a 

 spur to honest industry and frugality, exists no longer ; and I shudder to 

 say, that crimes, which were almost unknown in this class of society, are 

 now becoming common and familiar. And what is, perhaps, not the least 

 dangerous circumstance, a large share of our population feel no longer an 

 attachment to their native land, its government, or its laws ; the game laws 

 they hate even to execration ; and, in fact, seem almost ready to welcome 

 any change, however violent, under an idea that their condition cannot be 

 lower or worse than it is at present." (G. Z. [whom we know to be a 

 highly respectable man], in Farm. Journ., Feb. 22. 1830.) 



" Out of the pecuniary distress of the country have arisen acrimonious 

 and hostile feelings between the different orders of society, which threaten 

 the security of society itself." — Lord Radnor in the House of Peers, Feb. 25. 



" The landowners of England have sinned grievously towards the labour- 

 ing classes ; they ought, for very shame, to hide their heads, whenever the 

 condition of the labourer is mentioned. But we are told that the sins of 

 the father shall be visited on the children, and their day is now come. 

 It is useful that the world should sometimes see examples of retributive 

 justice." {Mom. Chron., February 26.) 



