“Mr. Turner also says, ‘When the parish property has been sold, a vast improvement in the external appearance of the cottages has taken place, and consequently a higher rent is demanded, and frequently obtained.’ We thus see one proof, among many, that the sales of parish property which have taken place under the orders of the Commissioners have been beneficial to the public at large; a vast mass of small buildings (amounting, for instance, in the Bromyard union only, to no less than the net worth of 3643l.) has been withdrawn from a state of dilapidation and decay and thrown into the market. Money has been expended on it; it has been put into tenantable and proper repair, and all parties have found their interest in the change. To the parish it formerly yielded nothing. The pauper lived on in filth and wretchedness, in a hovel of which he did not dare to complain, because he held it by sufferance; and the community at large were deprived of an opportunity for a profitable outlay of capital on tenements thus kept in mortmain of the worst kind. Such an outlay would not have taken place unless it promised a return, that is to say, unless the class for whose reception the cottages are fitted could in all probability pay for the improved accommodation. With regard to parties living in their own houses, Mr. Turner says, ‘There are many poor persons living in their own cottages, which are of a very inferior description, wretchedly comfortless, and have only one floor. They are decidedly worse than those which are rented, both as to accommodation and state of repairs; but these, for the most part, have been built on the waste and unenclosed land.’”
The mischievous effect of exemptions from rating on the ground of poverty, in bringing down buildings to the exempted scale, and in preventing advances beyond it, is strikingly displayed in Ireland, where all houses not exceeding the value of 5l. are exempted from contribution to the county cess. The general consequence is that, the farmers’ residences throughout the country are kept down to the level of mere cottages or inconvenient hovels, to avoid passing the line of contribution, and only pass it by indulgent or evasive valuations. But the supposed exemption (which, if it be not often made up by increased rent, is a circumstance peculiar to the smaller holdings in that country)—an exemption which no doubt was procured as a boon, was productive of further ill effects to the parties intended to be benefited.[[38]] Being kept by the immediate expense and the fear of their share of the tax to thatched roofs, these thatched roofs afforded facilities to incendiarism, since any one might put a cinder in the thatch, and run away without detection; hence it has placed the inmates so far under continued terror in disturbed times, that it would frequently have been worth the expense of putting on a slate roof as a measure of preventive police. The depression of the tenement is practically a depression of the habits and condition of the inhabitants.
I may assume that it has been proved that the labouring classes do possess the means of purchasing the comforts of superior dwellings, and also that they are not benefited by exemptions from the immediate charges wherever requisite to defray the expense of those superior comforts.
I shall now show how little it is in the power of these classes voluntarily to obtain these improvements,—setting aside entirely the consideration of the obstacles arising from depraved habits already formed.
The workman’s “location,” as it is termed, is generally governed by his work, near which he must reside. The sort of house, and often the particular house, may be said to be, and usually is, a monopoly. On arriving at manhood in a crowded neighbourhood, if he wishes to have a house, he must avail himself of the first vacancy that presents itself; if there happen to be more houses vacant than one, the houses being usually of the same class, little range of choice is thereby presented to him. In particular neighbourhoods near Manchester, and in other parts of the county of Lancaster, in some other manufacturing and in some rural districts, instances occur of the erection of improved ranges of larger and better constructed houses for the labouring classes; and, making deduction for the occasional misuse of the increased space by subdividing them and overcrowding them with lodgers, the extent to which these improved tenements are sought, and the manner in which an improved rent is paid, afford gratifying evidence of an increasing disposition prevalent amongst artisans to avail themselves of such improvements. These opportunities, however, are comparatively few, and occur in districts where multitudes continue in the most depressed condition, apparently without any power of emerging from it.
The individual labourer has little or no power over the internal structure and economy of the dwelling which has fallen to his lot. If the water be not laid on in the other houses in the street, or if it be unprovided with proper receptacles for refuse, it is not in the power of any individual workman who may perceive the advantages of such accommodations to procure them. He has as little control over the external economy of his residence as of the structure of the street before it, whether it shall be paved or unpaved, drained, or undrained. It may be said that he might cleanse the street before his own door. By some local acts the obligation to do so is imposed on the individual inhabitants. By those inhabitants who have servants this duty may be and is performed, but the labourer has no servant; all of his family who are capable of labour are out a-field, or in the manufactory or the workshop, at daybreak, and return only at nightfall, and this regulation therefore is unavoidably neglected.
Under the slavery of the existing habits of labourers, it is found that the faculty of perceiving the advantage of a change is so obliterated as to render them incapable of using, or indifferent to the use of, the means of improvement which may happen to come within their reach. The sense of smell, for instance, which generally gives certain warning of the presence of malaria or gases noxious to the health, appears often to be obliterated in the labourer by his employment. He appears to be insensible to anything but changes of temperature, and there is scarcely any stench which is not endured to avoid slight cold.
It would have been matter of sincere congratulation to have met with more extensive evidence of spontaneous improvement amongst the classes in receipt, of high wages, but nearly all the beneficial changes found in progress throughout the country are changes that have arisen from the efforts of persons of the superior classes. Inquiries have been made for plans of improved tenements, but none have been found which can be presented as improvements originating with the class intended to be accommodated. In the rural districts, the worst of the new cottages are those erected on the borders of commons by the labourers themselves. In the manufacturing districts, the tenements erected by building clubs and by speculating builders of the class of workmen, are frequently the subject of complaint, as being the least substantial and the most destitute of proper accommodation. The only conspicuous instances of improved residences of the labouring classes found in the rural districts are those which have been erected by opulent and benevolent landlords for the accommodation of the labourers on their own estates; and in the manufacturing districts, those erected by wealthy manufacturers for the accommodation of their own workpeople.
As in England so in Scotland, the most important improvements have been effected through enlightened landlords. The members of the Highland Society, who have made the best exertions for improving the condition of the labouring population in the rural districts, and have offered prizes for the best-constructed cottages and the best plans, competition being open to all parties, got nothing from the lower classes, and only succeeded in exciting the interest of the most intelligent proprietors, and getting improvements effected through their exertions. Mr. Loudon, in an appeal on behalf of the agricultural labourers, lays it down as a primary position that, “In general, proprietors ought not to entrust the erection of labourers’ cottages on their estates to the farmers, as it is chiefly owing to this practice that so many wretched hovels exist in the best cultivated districts of Scotland and Northumberland.”