Suggestions for its Improvement. 
"17 
suggestions has been acted upon ; and were it not that I have 
felt precluded from mentioning names, specific examples might 
have been cited, showing results more or less beneficial, according 
to the judgment with which they were introduced and the steadi- 
ness with which they were carried out ; but still invariably bene- 
ficial. All such instances, however, have been isolated and local, 
depending on the influence of some particular landowner, or the 
efforts of some benevolent individual ; and to cite them in detail 
would add little in support of the suggestions, which are moreover 
to be taken collectively ; for unless so taken and acted upon sys- 
tematically as a whole, the full amount of the benefits they are 
calculated to produce cannot be expected to arise from their 
adoption. 
No one will deny that increased employment, improved means 
of education, comfortable cottages, and convenient cottage-gardens, 
are each good, and that to establish either where it does not now 
exist would be productive of benefit : but to secure the largest 
amount of benefit derivable from them, not only in the aggregate 
but from each singly, they must all be introduced as essential 
parts of the same system, and be acted upon at the same time. 
Of this svstematic and simultaneous action it is believed no com- 
plete example can be found, and the suggestions for its adoption 
which have here been offered must therefore rest in great measure 
upon their own merits without the support of example, which, 
however authoritative with respect to operations on mere matter 
where the effects are uniform, is of less weight as regards objects 
immediately connected with the feelings and habits of a people, 
which come under a different category and must be judged on a 
different principle. 
It is only further necessary to add, that the foregoing recom- 
mendations are offered to the opulent of every class, and more 
especially to landowners and the employers of labour, under a 
conviction that they will be found sale, suitable, and generally 
sufficient for the end proposed ; and that if they fall short of re- 
medying every e\il to which the agricultural labourer is now sub- 
ject, they will at least go far towards it, without violating principle, 
or causing danger or derangement of any kind. The writer's 
conviction in this respect is founded upon thirty years' pretty 
close attention to the habits and condition of the labouring classes, 
and that under circumstances often peculiarly favourable for 
enabling him to arrive at correct conclusions on this most inter- 
esting and important question. 
George Nichoils. 
London, February \$t, 1846. 
