608 Retrospective Criticism* 



weeds down by hoeing, and receive the produce in the autumn. There is 

 also a hint thrown out in the same book respecting dyers' weed (i?eseda 

 Luteola) : it appears to flourish most luxuriantly on wastes, rubbish of quar- 

 ries, and might be collected ; perhaps, also, the Digitalis, if it is still in as 

 much favour with the physician. I once saw a cottager growing henbane and 

 white poppies for the druggist. I did not learn how they paid him ; but 

 there are, in many places, wild plants which run to waste. I remember once 

 being solicited to employ a person to gather the Z)aucus Carota from some 

 sandy dikes near the shore : a physician had prescribed the use of the ripe 

 seeds, as tea, as a remedy or preventive of the gravel. It was so very 

 plentiful that tons might have been got, if there had been a demand to pay 

 the gatherer. 



The cottages in this county are certainly far from good : most of them 

 have only one apartment, sometimes with an earthen floor, where they cook, 

 eat, and sleep in close beds (beds cased with wood). Those who have two 

 ends do not appear to use the second much, the expense of fuel coining too 

 high for them to do so. I do think the first improvement will be to have 

 the sleeping apartments above, which the fire will then always keep dry and 

 comfortable. The tile is a bad cover : it is very porous, and frequently breaks 

 or scales off with frost. The Welsh slate is now superseding it here ; the addi- 

 tional expense is very trifling ; it may be laid on at less elevation, and saves 

 roofing timber. Probably railroads and canals may soon convey these slates to 

 every part of the united kingdom, at so low a rate as may enable us to get 

 rid of the unsightly red pantile. On the subject of fuel, there still appears an 

 immense accumulation of small coal at the sea-side collieries. Will the con- 

 veyance ever become so low as to allow them to get into the midland coun- 

 ties j or is there still a duty upon them if carried by sea to the eastern or 

 southern coasts of England? They are at present a national loss, and 

 might be a great boon to the cottager. I think Count Rumford has a plan 

 of mixing them with clay, to economise the fuel and retain the heat : has it 

 ever been practised ? 



By way of making you acquainted with some of my opinions, I have sent 

 a separate paper upon the, corn laws, which you are at liberty to transfer 

 to the Country Times*, if they think it worth insertion. From it you will 

 partly judge that my opinions are not at all in favour of cooperative 

 societies. I think it is doing away, in a great measure, with the division 

 of labour ; or even admitting that they were all industrious, and each stuck 

 to his employment, what chance is there of holding together ? Will no mis- 

 chievous, lazy, or designing man ever find admittance into such societies ? 

 An industrious man, pursuing one line of business, studiously living within 

 his income, and carefully placing his savings in a savings' bank, or other 

 good security, may even now raise himself in life, as I have no doubt many 

 of your correspondents in this Magazine have done ; and, I should think, 

 far more safely than when they have to depend upon others' exertions, and 

 even honesty. I hope to see the day when, by the freedom of trade, and 

 taking the taxes off the productive labourer, the demand for labour maybe 

 so great, and wages so high, that one half of the labourers in the kingdom 

 may inhabit such houses as you have designed for them. 



With respect to waste lands, where these are what are called inferior 

 lands and private property, never doubt but that they will be cultivated as 

 soon as ever the price of corn rises high enough to allow them to be so ; 

 but it must be by the plough or some other machinery. The extra-produce 



* The article alluded to appeared in the Country Times of May 10. ; and 

 as we consider it of great importance to disseminate the opinion of an ex- 

 tensive farmer at rack-rent, on a subject in which he is so deeply interested, 

 we shall probably give it in a future Number. — Cond. 



