542 
Cow-Keeping by Farm Lahoureis. 
may be cooked iu a variety of ways. The buttermilk assists him greatly in 
feeding a few pigs to supply the wants of his own family, or, if sold, in pur- 
chasing other necessaries. I know that where good judgment is exercised in 
the purchase of a suitable cow, followed by good management on the jjart of 
the labourer's wife, the financial result, in some instances, is very advantageous 
indeed." 
I cannot conclude this paper without a brief reference to 
certain arguments — errors I should like to call them — used by 
some of my correspondents who are hostile to cow-keeping 
by labourers. They say that the cow must become, they fear — 
though they rarely, if ever, speak from experience — a cause of 
peculation, and that she must tend to engender feelings of 
suspicion in the mind of the employer ; and they say, moreover, 
" Of course where a cow is kept less money-wages will be paid. ' 
It is quite true that cow-keeping by farm labourers may, 
under bad management, resolve itself into a branch of the per- 
quisite system. Some years since, when staying at Cardigan, 
I observed numerous small plots of pasture attached to most 
of the farms in the neighbourhood, and let to the labourers by 
the occupiers of the farms at extortionate prices. The farm- 
tenants having sole control of the supply of land, the cow- 
pastures were, in fact, allowed in part payment of wages. A 
more vicious form of the perquisite system can hardly be con- 
ceived ; but such a flaw is not necessarily incidental to the 
keeping of cows by labourers. The tenants, on all the estates 
that I have mentioned in this article, pay the current wages of 
their neighbourhoods. 
As to feelings of suspicion and peculation, neither the one 
nor the other ought to exist ; and, if they do exist, a well- 
established system of cow-keeping by the labourers will remove 
both these evils. A great proprietor, on succeeding to his estate 
some years since, called the labourers together and addressed 
them in these words : " I am sorry to say, my friends, that most 
of you are as bad as you can be and he named peculation 
among the crimes that had been proved against them. They 
had not kept cows, but it was a cow-keeping district; and the 
landlord, after assuring his audience that the past should be 
forgotten, included a good house and a cow-pasture among 
the benefits which each labourer should enjoy for the future, 
until the same were forfeited by a criminal act legally proved. 
Hardly one man on that estate has since been convicted of a 
crime. I have seen the oil-cake, bran, and maize in sacks and 
casks, purchased by the cow-keepers on that estate, but as for the 
peculation, when I mentioned that subject to the employers it was 
declared to be a thing quite unknown. Farm labourers may have 
Ijeen incendiaries in some cases, some years since, and in some 
localities they may be thieves ; but if that be the case, their 
