ment in the cottages now erected upon estates.
They have three bedrooms, and every appliance and comfort compatible
with their necessarily small size. It is only the cottages erected by
the labourers themselves on waste plots of ground which are open to
objection. Those he builds himself are, indeed, as a rule, miserable
huts, disgraceful to a Christian country. I have an instance before me
at this moment where a man built a cottage with two rooms and no
staircase or upper apartments, and in those two rooms eight persons
lived and slept--himself and wife, grown-up daughters, and children.
There was not a scrap of garden attached, not enough to grow
half-a-dozen onions. The refuse and sewage was flung into the road, or
filtered down a ditch into the brook which supplied that part of the
village with water. In another case at one time there was a cottage in
which twelve persons lived. This had upper apartments, but so low was
the ceiling that a tall man could stand on the floor, with his head
right through the opening for the staircase, and see along the upper
floor under the beds! These squatters are the curse of the community. It
is among them that fever and kindred infectious diseases break out; it
is among them that wretched couples are seen bent double with
rheumatism and affections of the joints caused by damp. They have often
been known to remain so long, generation after generation, in these
wretched hovels, that at last the lord of the manor, having neglected to
claim quit-rent, they can defy him, and claim them as their own
property, and there they stick, eyesores and blots, the fungi of the
land. The cottages erected by farmers or by landlords are now, one and
all, fit and proper habitations for human beings; and I verily believe
it would be impossible throughout the length and breadth of Wiltshire to
find a single bad cottage on any large estate, so well and so thoroughly
have the landed proprietors done their work. On all farms gardens are
attached to the cottages, in many instances very large, and always
sufficient to produce enough vegetables for the resident. In villages
the allotment system has been greatly extended of late years, and has
been found most beneficial, both to owners and tenants. As a rule the
allotments are let at a rate which may be taken as L4 per annum--a sum
which pays the landlord very well, and enables the labourer to
remunerate himself. In one village which came under my observation th