Workhouse Gardens and Gardeners. 715 



able-bodied men applied for allowances, or work, they could at once be 

 set to digging or trenching by the job, or by measurement, which would 

 be much better than employment by the day. Almost every thing would 

 depend on getting a very superior gardener, and contriving his remuneration 

 in such a way, as to make it depend on the produce and profits of the gar- 

 den. As scarcely any single parishes in the country could afford to maintain 

 such a gardener, half a dozen or a dozen parishes might join and employ a 

 gardener in common, and this man, by keeping a horse, might visit each 

 workhouse garden two or three times a week. Each garden might have 

 its pauper foreman and forewoman, and the labours, from the least to the 

 greatest, should, as much as possible, be let against time, or at certain rates; 

 and out of every job some small proportion, if it were only a pipe of home- 

 grown tobacco (or the remuneration might be in numbers of a certain value 

 per dozen), should go to the private pocket of the pauper. Now and then, 

 when superior-minded men have directed their attention to the management 

 of the poor, or of prisoners, they have effected astonishing ameliorations, 

 A case which presents itself to our minds at this moment is that of the 

 workhouse of Hagenau (p. 67.), where 600 female prisoners, condemned to 

 labour for limited periods, by the admirable management of the present 

 governor, actually pay the expenses of the establishment, and put something 

 in their own pockets. Let a source of agreeable and productive labour, 

 such as large gardens, be found for the inmates of our workhouses, and let 

 efficient gardeners be set over them, and we have no doubt the poor in 

 many parishes would nearly or wholly support themselves. But if they did 

 not support themselves, it would surely be a powei'ful check on the able- 

 bodied idle poor, to know that it was utterly impossible for them to get any 

 relief without a return in labour. Much might be effected in reforming the 

 workhouse system if it were once fairly set about. 



But very little can be expected to be done in this way, or in any other 

 tending to reformation, while the parish vestries in the country are com- 

 posed of men ignorant of general principles on any subject, and governed by 

 the most erroneous ideas of their own interest. The landed proprietors, and 

 the enlightened class of a parish, find it impossible to have any thing to do 

 with such men; they are outnuuibered and sometimes bullied by them into 

 absurd measures, and they in consequence seldom look near the vestry, unless 

 compelled to do so by some extraordinary pressure of the rates. Few about 

 large towns have any idea of the absurdities that are committed by vestries 

 in remote parishes in the country; and this will continue to be the case till 

 the men composing these vestries are generally enlightened by reading. As 

 this can never take place with the present generation, any radical improve- 

 ment must depend on the degree of education given to their offipring. 

 School education, in short, applied to all classes, to such an extent as to 

 produce a reading population, like that of Germany and Sweden, is the only 

 source that can be relied on, either for introducing or perpetuating any 

 grand or general improvement in the condition of any part of society. 



It is this general ignorance in the country, and even in the parliament, 

 which renders it necessary to promulgate such an endless number of laws. 

 A people enlightened, justly represented in their legislative assembly, truly 

 free in their commercial intercourse among themselves and with other 

 nations, free as to their choice of opinions, and, above all, free in regard 

 to the press, would not require a multitude of new laws every year. But 

 in an old, corrupted, diseased country like Britain, this is unavoidable, till its 

 constitution be renovated by a new generation of men who have been 

 highly enlightened in their youth, and who shall be neither too rich nor too 

 poor for public business. In the mean time, as this law-enacting system 

 must go on for want of something better, we do not see any great harm 

 that would result from passing an act rendering it legal to have workhouse 

 gardens and gardeners, as well as workhouses. 



