538 Agricultural and Horticultural Labowers 



*s 



embark. The necessity which exists, and which seems likely 

 to continue, for selling the produce of our mines and manu- 

 factories at very reduced prices, if sold at all, operating, and 

 necessarily so, great reduction in the rate of wages ; the impo- 

 sition of direct taxes, and the probability of the curse of tax- 

 ation being farther extended so as to include the cottages of 

 the poorest of the poor, as contemplated in a bill introduced 

 into parliament in the course of the last session by Mr. Slaney, 

 one of the members for Shrewsbury, render, I fear, all pros- 

 pect of retrievement but faint and feeble, till that change takes 

 place in our national affairs which error and misrule have been 

 long preparing. I am, Sir, &c. 



Woodfield, August 28. John H. Moggridge. 



Art. V. Observations chiefly relating to the Agricultural and 

 Horticultural Labourers in France and England. By R. Bake- 

 well, Esq. 



Sir, 

 I have perused with unmixed satisfaction your notes and 

 reflections on the country round Paris, in the last Number 

 of the Gardener's Magazine (p. 1.) : though much has been 

 written and published on the French capital, I have met with 

 no other account which conveys so correct and original a de- 

 scription of what is peculiar and distinctive in the characters 

 and appearance of the environs of Paris, compared with those 

 of London. Travellers generally confine their observations 

 too much to the higher orders of society, whose manners in 

 all civilised countries are so nearly reduced to the same form, 

 that they may, as Rousseau observes, be regarded as puppets 

 fixed to the same board, and moved by the same wire. " The 

 simple annals of the labouring poor," who compose the great 

 mass of society, deserve the chief attention of the traveller, at 

 least of him who would really benefit the world by his ram- 

 blings. It has doubtless occurred to you, that many customs of 

 the people on the Continent, which appeared at first as absurd, 

 for no better reason than their variance from those in Great 

 Britain, were, on a more complete knowledge of them, found 

 to be appropriate to the climate and circumstances of the 

 country. I would therefore ask you, in the spirit of enquiry, 

 and not of criticism, whether the "intolerably high roofs" of 

 which you complain, as disfiguring the houses in France, do 

 not possess substantial advantages which more than compen- 

 sate for their appearance ? In the first place, the empty space 

 under the roof forms the grenier, and is appropriated to keep 



