A new system of practical domestic economy.

Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new system of practical domestic economy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    385/508 (page 369)
    It is an important and established fact, as stated by the late worthy Secretary to the Board of Agri- culture, that in the counties of Rutland and Lin- coln, the practice is, to attach land to cottages, sufficient to support that number of cows which the cottager is able to purchase : they are tenants to the chief landlords, and sub-tenants to farmers, yet these latter are very generally steady friends to the system. Well they may be so, for the poor’s-rates are next to nothing, when compared with such as are found in parishes wherein this admirable sys- tem is not established. In the late minute enquiries made by the Board of Agriculture into the state of the labouring poor throughout the kingdom, many persons were written to who reside in the districts where this system is common; and it was found by their replies, that the practice stands the test of the present distress, as well as it supported the opposite difficulties of extreme scarcity. It is much to be regretted, that so admirable an example is not co- pied in every part of the kingdom. In those countries where no such practice is met with, it is very rare indeed to meet with a labourer who has saved any money ; their reliance is entirely on the parish, and their present earnings dissipated at the ale-house: not so in Lincolnshire; the man who wishes to marry, saves his money to buy cows; and girls who design to have husbands, take the same measures to secure them. Sobriety, industry, and economy are thus secured; and children are trained from infancy to the culture of a garden, and to at- tending cattle, instead of starving with unemployed spinning-wheels. No object can better deserve the attention of men of considerable landed property : for, if some change of management, decisive in its nature, does not take place, poor’s-rates will con-