10 
MANAGEMENT OF GARDEN ALLOTMENTS. 
dependence of our working classes. It has 
been, in our opinion, the ruin of the people 
there, as far as the total prevention of honest 
industry can be so called. If a family there 
could secure a piece of ground planted with 
potatoes, and take up the crop, it was all they 
cared for, the labour was nothing ; the crop 
was their food, and so without any incitement 
or encouragement to work, and enough potatoes 
to keep them from starving, they were alike 
reckless of every thing beyond the mere pos- 
session of their store to last the season. The 
failure of their crop, therefore, was the failure 
of every thing. To find them labour and pay 
them well for it was forcing them into active 
exertion, which they could not brook, and 
making them work or starve ; this un- 
fortunately put the whole population out of 
the way ; their discontent was manifest, — 
their idleness a downright firmly- rooted vice. 
They would understand nothing in the way of 
relief except finding them food, while they 
indulged, as heretofore, when their pits were 
full of potatoes ; and unless there were certain 
restrictions in the mode of cropping, the allot- 
ment of land among the rural population of 
England might in some degree awaken notions 
by no means beneficial to their morals or their 
social condition. There is as much to guard 
against in one extreme as the other. Give 
the poor gardens that shall enable them to use 
their over hours, and by means of increased 
industry procure a greater plenty of good 
wholesome vegetable food, and you teach them 
the value of labour by the double operation of 
profitably filling up their leisure time, and 
keeping them out of some other, and in all 
probability costly occupation. Nothing in our 
experience tends so to demoralize men as idle 
time on their hands : the mind must be 
amused ; the less mind a man has the more 
easily is he induced to go astray. What is the 
ordinary consequence of a man coming from his 
daily labour with three hours daylight on his 
hands before bed-time ? He and his com- 
panions, with no profitable object in view, — 
nothing to tempt them to advantageous occu- 
pation, go and take — we are putting the most 
favourable construction on the thing — go and 
take their social pipe and pint of beer at the 
ale-house ; suppose this to be done, and no 
more, the man has expended at the week's end 
one shilling for beverage in which his wife 
and children participated not, and goes home 
to bed to get up to his daily labour in the 
morning and repeat the same in the evening; so 
that instead of adding one iota to his resources 
by the three hours of his own time, he uses 
them to lessen his income, if nothing worse. 
But suppose — and this applies to a large por- 
tion of the rural population — suppose the 
mind is a little more active, and wants a little 
more excitement, — suppose there are games at 
skittles and bowls, and quoits, and other more 
objectionable gambling going forward, and he 
mixes with the throng, it is not one nor two 
pints that will do, and the Saturday night is a 
painful one to the mother and children at 
home ; suppose half the wages have gone to 
pay the ale-house score, and suppose the frugal 
shilling laid by for clothing by the frugal 
housewife is missing, and we gradually see the 
poor creatures worse clad and worse fed : 
what, then, becomes of the man ? He does 
not improve while he has three hours of idle 
time on his hands. He gets from bad to w T orse; 
he begins to see griping poverty at home. 
He has seen enough to feel acutely now and 
then the mischief he has done ; but, with no 
path pointed out for him, and no apparent 
means to recover himself, he flies to the ale- 
house to dissipate the gloomy picture, and 
makes bad worse; perhaps joins some society of 
poachers, and tries to get by these means some- 
thing to make up for the money spent in drink. 
One step only from poaching to less equivocal 
robbing, and the man is lost. How to reclaim 
the thousands of this precise character is 
worth serious consideration. Offer him an 
allotment, as in some places they do now, — he 
has no tools, no money for seed, no means of 
starting fair. Hence the necessity of adopting 
a system. Let the same power that provides 
him with a quarter of an acre of land at six- 
pence per week, provide him with his proper 
tools, seeds, and other necessaries, at sixpence 
a-week more till they are paid for, and the man 
is saved. He will fly to his garden, and feel 
it the greatest relief ; he will feel the good 
effects in an incredibly short time; he will lay 
down on his pillow fatigued, — but to lay down 
with a quiet mind after fatigue is one of those 
luxuries which are valued by all who can 
enjoy it; and who can so well enjoy it as those 
who have been previously in the habit of 
going home to a wretched wife, to ragged 
children, to an empty cupboard, feverish with 
drink, but nevertheless sensible enough to be 
cut to the heart by the sighs of his neglected 
helpmate ? Yet thousands of such men are 
allowed to go step by step to infamy and per- 
dition for want of considerate superiors. All 
men have to pay some sacrifice for the pre- 
servation of the bulk of their property. They 
pay for a watchful police ; they pay an in- 
surance premium to save themselves in case 
of fire ; and if the landed gentry in every 
town would devote the most favourably situated 
fields to give the humble population the benefit 
of a garden, they would be preserving in the 
most effectual manner the rest of their pro- 
perty. They would not be called upon for 
so much poor-rates; they would protect them- 
selves better than the police can protect them 
