CHAPTER XI.

ON THE ADVANTAGES OF THE SMALL ALLOTMENT SYSTEM, AS A MEANS OF CARRYING THE NATION SAFELY THROUGH ANY TEMPORARY DIFFICULTIES, WHICH MIGHT ELSE ATTEND THE ABOLITION OF THE CORN LAWS.

"There is the uncultivated land! *

Here are the people unemployed!"

Facts and Illustrations of Labourers' Friend Society.

"It has been computed that the waste lands of Britain and its isles, might be made to yield to the nation the annual income of twenty millions."+-Home Colonization versus Emigration.

SHOULD landlords apprehend a temporary fall of rents, farmers fear some temporary inconvenience, or agricultural labourers dread a temporary want of employment, as consequent upon the abolition of the corn laws, there is every reason to believe that such evils might be prevented, by the extensive adoption of the small allotment system.

* There are thirty millions of acres, fifteen millions improvable. See third report of Emigration Committee.

+ Were they not shamefully jobbed. This would be a handsome reduction of the fifty millions taxation.

Numerous well known experiments in cottage husbandry, the satisfactory results of which are already before the public,* prove that labourers, with or without other avocations, holding a cottage, and from a quarter of an acre, and half an acre, to three or five acres each, obtain such crops as warrant a belief, that they could afford to sell their produce in an open market, that is, without corn laws, yet live comfortably, and pay with ease to landlords the same amount of rent which large farmers, notwithstanding that ruinous and unjust parliamentary interference, misnamed protection, find it always difficult, in many instances impossible, to pay.

It may, however, be desirable, before proceeding further with this argument, to state here a few of the many facts and instances which abound in the authorities referred to, as well as some others obtained directly from parties concerned, illustrative of the advantages of the small allotment system, it being on the reality and degree of those advantages, that the conclusion aimed at must be founded.

The Philanthropic Magazine for May, 1828, gives a striking instance of a poor man in York

* See "Facts and Illustrations," published monthly by Labourers' Friend Society; also, "The Golden Farmer," 66 Home Communications to the Board of Agriculture,"

Colonization,"

“ The Philanthropic Magazine," and the "Quarterly Review,"

No. 81.

shire, with fourteen children, who lived comfortably and did well on three and a half acres of gravelly soil, so poor that, with an old cottage, he paid at first but fifty shillings rent for the whole. He improved the land to be worth ten pounds rent, paid that advance of rent, brought up his family without knowing want, and, so far from ever becoming chargeable to the parish, realized funds sufficient to rebuild his cottage, and purchase the fee simple of his three and a half acres. He continually repeats, "It is my bit of land that has done it all."

A remarkable instance is also given of a labourer, who came to the village having a wife and six children, and being so poor that there arose a demur about allowing him to remain, lest he should become chargeable to the parish. He began by renting and cultivating one acre; in time became able to purchase nine acres; and is now worth fifteen hundred pounds or upwards. Another instance is given of a labourer, who, from being a poor boy in a farmer's service, and beginning by paying eight guineas rent for four acres, is now in independent circumstances. On one quarter of an acre, he used to raise four tons of carrots, which paid the rent of his whole four acres, while the tops of the carrots were nearly as valuable, for the use of his own pigs, as a crop of cabbages. In another instance, a labourer refused thirteen guineas for the year's produce of half an acre.

N

The communications to the Board of Agriculture, give an account of a cottager of Sir Henry Vavasour's, who rented three acres of land; his stock consisted of two cows, and two pigs; he cultivated his land with the assistance of his wife and a girl of twelve years old, at their over hours. They subsisted on their daily wages at other labour; paid their rent by the sale of their butter only; and were in the habit of saving thirty pounds a year out of the produce of the sale of their crops. The communications give also an account of a cottager of Mr. Howard of Melbourn Farm, who at his over hours, aided by his family, cultivated one acre and a quarter, including the site of his cottage and fences. The land was at first so poor, that it was not considered worth five shillings per acre rent; in a few years, however, care and industry had improved it so much, that it yielded a crop worth ten pounds seventeen shillings. This poor man, before he had any land, had the greatest difficulty in maintaining his wife and three children. His family now increased to seven children, and even his health became indifferent, yet, with this acre and a quarter of originally the poorest land, a cow, and a pig, he maintained and brought up his increased family in comfort, without requiring parish relief.

Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke, by whom the writer has been favoured with the following statement, has tried the small allotment system very

extensively, and with such gratifying success, on his own property in Northamptonshire, that his tenants are, by its operation, removed as it were from beneath the ban of our great national infliction-taxes on first necessaries. They all have of their own producing, therefore, without encountering an artificially, or by act of Parliament enhanced market, bread, pork, milk, butter, potatoes, and other vegetables in abundance. They pay their rent with ease, and purchase decent clothing, and necessary articles of furniture, with the wages they earn at other labour-their allotments being, in general, but one acre, half an acre, or a quarter of an acre, according to what they have hands to cultivate; and thus are they enabled to rear and educate their families, however numerous, without so much as the apprehension of ever having to apply for parish relief. For the additional mouths, being thus accompanied by additional, profitably employed hands, the balance is kept even, or rather inclined in favour of the numerous families, as where there is a garden, a cow, and pigs, children who had else been burdensome to their parents or the parish, can be made useful at a very early age. Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke adds, that in no one instance has he found the small allotment system fail.

To poor handy crafts or manufacturing labourers, half an acre, or even a rood is invaluable: it answers the purpose of a sort of saying's bank in