(1) Those who have a sufficient quantity of grass enclosed land to enable them to keep one or more cows winter and summer, and a garden near their house; a grass field allotted to a certain number being as advantageous, or nearly so, as separate small enclosures.
(2) Those who have a summer pasture for their cow, and some arable land, on which they grow the winter provision. This is slightly less advantageous than ([1]), because tilling the arable land takes up more time.
(3) Those who have a right of common for the summer keep of the cow, and a meadow, or arable ground, or the share of a meadow in common, for the winter provision. If it were not that commons are usually over-stocked, this would be equivalent to ([1]) or ([2]).
(4) Those who have a right of common, but no cow, and a garden. In this case geese and pigs can be kept.
(5) Those who have a right of common and no garden. In this case the value of the right of common depends upon whether fuel is obtained from the common or not.
(6) Those who have several acres of arable land, and no summer pasture for a cow. This, he maintains, is of little value, because of the large expenditure of labour necessary for cultivating the land, but he admits that many would differ from him on this point.
(7) Those who have a garden near the house.
(8) Those who have no land whatever. “This is a very bad situation for a labourer to be placed in, both for his comfort and the education of his children.”
Then he continues, in words which seem in general as true and weighty now as when written or as at any time within the last hundred years:—“In countries where it has never been the custom for labourers to keep cows, it would be very difficult to introduce it; but where no gardens have been annexed to the cottages it is sufficient to give the ground, and the labourer is sure to know what to do with it, and will reap an immediate benefit from it ... there should be as much as will produce all the garden stuff the family consumes, and enough, with the addition of a little meal, for a pig. I think they ought to pay the same rent that a farmer would pay for the land, and no more. I am persuaded that it frequently happens that a labourer lives in a house at 20s. a year rent, which he is unable to pay, to which, if a garden of a rood was added, for which he would have to pay five or ten shillings a year more, that he would be enabled, by the profit he would derive from the garden, to pay the rent of the house, etc., with great advantage to himself.