‘A lily white duck came and gobbled him up.’
Pray apply the moral. Had the said frog had his mind cultivated, and had he been acquainted with nature, he would not have engaged in a thoughtless courtship, that could have no good end, nor have disobeyed the voice of experience, and so met with the fate that awaited him. You may now go on your walk; and if a common frog cannot interest you, take care of the lily white duck.”
B.
GARDENS FOR THE LABOURING CLASSES.
BY MARTIN DOYLE.
The advantage which the working man, possessed of a little patch of land at a moderate rent, has over him who is without any, or holds it at a rate greatly above its value (a common case with the Irish labourer), can only be fully understood by those who have narrowly observed in England the respective conditions of the field labourer, with his allotment of a rood or half a rood of garden, and the workman in a town factory. It is very obvious that the garden gives healthful recreation to the family, young and old, who have always some little matter to perform in it, and if they really like the light work of cultivating kitchen vegetables, fruits and flowers, they combine pleasure with profit. Here is something on which they can always fall back as a resource if a day’s work for hire is interrupted—they can make up at home for so much lost time—the children have something rational and useful to do, instead of blackguarding about roads and streets—they help to raise the potatoes and cabbages, &c., which with prudent management materially assist their housekeeping.
The benefits which have arisen to the labourer and all the rural poor in England who have obtained from ten to forty perches of garden from land-proprietors or farmers, or those who have the privilege of encroaching upon commons for the purpose, is truly surprising. Much of this is attributable to the exertions of the London Labourers’ Friend Society, who, in an age when party violence divides man from his fellows, and excites from some quarter or other opposition to every system designed for the common good, have quietly but steadily pursued their own way.
I have had occasion more than once to press upon the attention of those who have the disposal of land in Ireland, the great benefits which would result to our poor if they would act upon the principle which actuates this benevolent society; and strange though it be, the fact is, that some landlords possessing estates both in England and Ireland are at pains to secure to the English labourer advantages which they take no trouble to provide for the labourer on the soil of Ireland.
I have referred to the principle which guides the society. It is, that the labouring classes should have such allotment of land as will not interfere with their general course of fixed labour, nor render them at all independent of it, but merely give them employment during those hours which they have at command in the intervals of their more profitable occupations. I have myself seen innumerable instances of the happy effects of giving to the labourer or little mechanic even half a rood of land, which he generally has in the highest state of productiveness, and from it his table is frequently supplied; while gooseberry and currant trees, in luxuriant bearing, and flowers close to the road, and without a higher fence than a paling or hedge three feet high, attest the high degree of honesty and decorum which the habit of having such productions in this unprotected way undoubtedly generates.
The local poor-rates have in all instances been greatly lessened by this mode of enabling labourers to help themselves; and if in this country the compulsory system of providing food or employment for the sick or hungry poor had prevailed long ago as in England, the landlords would have found means to guard against those dreadful realities of destitution with which we have been familiarized. Not that it is desirable to give a very open invitation to the parish manger, for this destroys the feeling of self-dependence and weakens the motives to economy and industry. But there should have long since been more practical exertion to place the labourer within reach of reasonable comforts.
What are the circumstances of tens of thousands of working people in the great manufacturing towns of Great Britain, in which no land can be given to them? Families so circumstanced wear out their health and existence in unvarying labour—not requiring much immediate exertion of strength, it is true; but wearisome from its continued sameness, which gives no exercise whatever to the mind.