28 
Condition of the Agricultural Labourer, with 
Note A, referred to at page "7. 
In proof of what can be done in the way of improvement, by a right 
understanding between the landlord and tenant, an instance may be cited 
of a farmer possessing skill and capital, who took a large farm in Wilt- 
shire, on terms which at once encouraged and enabled him to improve 
the property. On entering upon the farm, he brought with him his 
ploughman, and two or three of his best labourers ; but the other farmers 
in the parish became alarmed at this, and complained that he was bring- 
ing a burthen upon them, there being already, as they declared, more 
labourers than could be employed. The next winter these farmers, as 
usual, turned off several of their men, whom the new-comer immediately 
engaged, as he wanted them for draining, fencing, and the other works 
necessary for good and successful farming, but which had hitherto been 
altogether neglected. On the return of spring the men were, of course, 
again wanted by their old masters, but the new-comer had engaged them 
all permanently ; and thus the persons who had been complaining of 
over-population, and the introduction of non-parishioners, were them- 
selves compelled to seek for labourers out of the parish, the field of em- 
ployment having been so far enlarged as to afford full occupation to every 
labourer belonging to it. 
Note B, referred to at page 17. 
Extracts from a Letter of the Clerk of the Ampthill Union. 
January 23rd, 1841 . 
" I think I may affirm it to be an established fact, that the occupiers 
of comfortable and convenient cottages are generally in all respects 
superior to those of tenements of an opposite description, which is dis- 
played in their being better clothed, their more orderly deportment, 
their more regular attendance at a place of worship, their greater anxiety 
to maintain a good name, the more respectable and comfortable appear- 
ance of their families, &c. From them also there are proportionably 
fewer applications for parish relief, I should say especially on account 
of sickuess. It is generally seen that labourers whose homes are clean, 
comfortable and convenient, do not frequent the beer-shop so much as 
those whose homes are wretched, filthy, and miserable, and cannot by 
exertion be much improved. It may reasonably be expected that a man 
after his day's work should resort for those comforts which his home 
does not afford somewhere else; that place in most cases will be the 
beer-shop, and the result is an increase of wickedness and depravity. 
From these facts I feel fully persuaded that, were it practicable, a general 
improved cottage accommodation would certainly tend to produce 
amongst the labouring classes a generally corresponding moral im- 
provement. 
"A large proportion of the cottages in the Union are very miserable 
places, small and inconvenient, in which it is impossible to keep up 
even the common decencies of life. I will refer to one instance with 
