712 - Co7idition of the Labouring Classes. 



so acted, we never heard of one who gave it up. While there may be great 

 doubts as to the poHcy of granting as much land as will just enable a family 

 to live, there can be none as to either the general policy, or individual pru- 

 dence, of grants to servants and labourers of the description above contem- 

 plated. If every landlord in the country were to act on it, a great proportion 

 of the existing misery would be immediately reduced. 



" A very beneficial law has been recently enacted, enabling parish officers 

 to purchase or hire any quantity of land not exceeding twenty acres, with 

 the view of letting it out in allotments to the labouring parishioners. The 

 judicious application of the authority thus vested in overseers cannot fail to 

 ,^produce the best effects. A number of cottage endowments may be thus 

 created, and placed beyond the reach either of the cupidity or the caprice 

 of individual proprietors. In one point, however, it seems to us that this 

 excellent act is susceptible of improvement. The quantity which it places 

 at the disposal of parochial officers is much too limited to meet the neces- 

 sities of large parishes. The overseers should, we think, be authorised, 

 under proper restrictions, to purchase or hire a quantity of land, for the 

 purpose of establishing these small cottage-farms, bearing some defined pro- 

 portion to the extent of cultivated land contained in each parish." 



We have great doubts as to the permanent benefit of any thing that can 

 be done by parishes, or, indeed, we may say, that can be done by any party, 

 out of the natural course of things. We do not see the point at which any 

 parish is to stop, or could with justice stop, after it had begun to let out 

 small allotments to labourers. At the same time, we admit that the poor- 

 rates may become so excessive, in some parishes, as to render the measure 

 contemplated the best one that could be adopted, in order to save, for a 

 time, some rent to the landlord. If adopted generally, we think it would 

 not be difficult to show that it would end in rendering the poor the lords of 

 the soil. But if it were adopted generally, in connection with a high de- 

 gree of education, what would be the probable result ? Either it would 

 make parents prudent as to the number of children they produced ; or it 

 would fit these children for emigration, and thus, instead of burthening the 

 country, create in other countries a demand for its manufactures. 



It is remarkable that only once, in the course of this review, does the 

 reviewer mention the subject of education. " Incredible exertions," he says, 

 " have been made to spread more extensively, among the English peasantry, 

 the advantages of education, in the hope that the knowledge of what is right 

 would wean them from the practice of what is wrong. But while we sow 

 the wind, we must content ourselves with reaping the whirlwind : we endea- 

 vour to sweeten the stream, and make no attempt to cleanse the source." 



The general opinion of men of a certain manner of thinking is, that the 

 use of education to the poor is to " wean them from the practice of what 

 is wrong." This is a part of our object also : but the grand efficient pur- 

 pose which we have in view, in recommending universal and high education, 

 is to render a man better able to support his family ; to render that family 

 more comfortable by creating a greater number of wants, and supplying 

 them ; to raise the dignity of the poor as intellectual beings ; to enable them 

 to ascertain their precise position in society; tomaintain their rights as men 

 and as citizens, against the encroachments of the rich ; and to render their 

 opinion influential in the control of local and general government. 



The reviewer concludes by stating, that he has confined his attention "to 

 the condition of those labourers who are regularly employed in the ope- 

 rations of husbandr}' : the disposal and employment of that surplus popula- 

 tion, both agricultural and manufacturing, for whose labour there is no 

 effective demand, forms a wholly distinct question." We thence conclude 

 that this question will be entered into in an early number of the review; 

 and we sincerely desire that it may be done, because, at all events, good will 

 arise from discussion. 



