State of AcjrkuUure in Northuniherland. 187 



dealers, meal- sellers, and bakers are saved to the consumer; and 

 the corn, which would cost the farmer 16/. to pay his hind, is 

 more valuable to the latter than 20/. paid in money-wages, to be 

 expended in stones of meal or quartern loaves at the end of each 

 week. One very obvious benefit arising to the hind from this mode of 

 paying in kind, besides that of having a store of wholesome food always 

 at command which has not been taxed with the profits of intermediate 

 agents, is the absence of all temptation, which the receipt of weekly 

 wages, and the necessity of resorting to a village or town to buy pro- 

 visions, hold out, of spending some part of the money in the ale-house 

 which ought to provide for the wants of the family ; and to this circum- 

 stance, and to the domestic employment which their gardens afford in 

 their leisure hours, we are probably much indebted for the remarkable 

 sobriety and exemplary moral conduct of the peasantry of the north. 



" The produce of his garden, his small potatoes, and the refuse of his 

 dairy, enable the hind to fatten two pigs in the year. The keep of a 

 cow, supplied entirely by his master, consists of pasturage in summer, 

 and a ton of hay, or an equivalent in turnips, generally ten cart-loads of 

 white turnips, or five of white and three of swedes, and as much straw 

 as he chooses in winter. This is reckoned to cost the farmer eight or 

 nine pounds ; but if the cow be a good one, it is evident that the advan- 

 tage must be much more than that to a family. The calf, if early in 

 the season, sells for forty shillings, or thereabouts ; if later, perhaps for 

 thirty shillings ; and if the good wife be a frugal manager, she will sell 

 forty or fifty shillings' worth of butter, besides an ample supply of milk 

 and cheese for the use of the family. The wool received gives employ- 

 ment to the females to spin, and knit it into stockings in the winter 

 evenings, or it is sent, after being spun into yarn, to be made into 

 blankets. In this way habits of industry and economy are promoted, 

 and domestic and social virtues engendered and preserved, in a manner 

 and to an extent unknown in those districts where the younger members 

 of a fiimily are early driven from the shelter of their paternal roof and 

 the control of a parent's eye ; or where the parents, deserted by their 

 children, are forced to take refuge, under the infirmities of age or the 

 pressure of want, in the corrupting atmosphere of a parish workhouse. 

 Look into one of our north-country cottages during a winter's evening, 

 and you will probably see assembled the family group round a cheerful 

 coal-fire — which, by the way, is an inestimable blessing to all classes, 

 but chiefly to the poor of this country, — females knitting or spinning — 

 the father, perhaps, mending shoes — an art almost all acquire — and one 

 of the young ones reading for the amusement of the whole circle; and 

 contrast this with the condition of many young men employed as farm- 

 servants in the southern counties, who, being paid board-wages, club 

 together to have their comfortless meal cooked in a neighbouring cottage, 

 with no house to call their home, left to sleep in an outhouse or hay-loft, 

 subject to the contamination of idle companions, with no parent's eye to 

 watch their actions and no parent's voice to warn them of their errors ; 

 and say which situation is best calculated to promote domestic comfort, 

 family affection, and moral rectitude. 



"The possession of a cow is to the northern hind an object of endea- 



