the utility of which is more than doubtful.
Stories are currently believed of such four penny-pieces purchasing
quarts of ale, and of such blankets being immediately sold to raise
money for the same end. A village council would be able to suggest
many ways in which the income of these charities could be far better
employed. The giving of coal has already been substituted in some
places for the fourpenny-piece and blanket, which is certainly a
sensible change; but if possible it would be better to avoid
so-called charity altogether. Why should not the income of half a
dozen villages lying adjacent to each other be concentrated upon a
cottage hospital, or upon a hospital for lying-in women, which is
one of the great desiderata in country places. Such institutions
afford charity of the highest and best character, without any
degradation to the recipient. At the present moment the woman who
has lost her reputation, and is confined with an illegitimate child,
simply proceeds to the workhouse, where she meets with every
attention skilled nurses and science can afford. The labourer's wife
is left to languish in a close overcrowded room, and permitted to
resume her household labours before she has properly recovered.
There is nothing more wretched than the confinement of an
agricultural labourer's wife.

The health of villagers, notwithstanding the pure air, is often
prejudiced by the overcrowding of cottages. This overcrowding may
not be sufficiently great to render an appeal to the legal
authorities desirable, and yet may be productive of very bad
effects, both moral and physical. It is particularly the case where
the cottages are the property of the labourer himself, and are held
at a low quit-rent. The labourer cannot afford to rebuild the
cottage, which has descended to him from his father, or possibly
grandfather, and which was originally designed for one small family,
but, in the course of years, three or four members of that family
have acquired a right of residence in it. Of this right they are
extremely tenacious, though it may be positively injurious to them.
As many as two married men, with wives and children, may crowd
themselves into this dirty hovel, with a result of quarrelling and
immorality that cannot be surpassed; in fact, some things that have
happened in such places are not to be mentioned. Under the best
circumstances it often happens that there are not sufficient
cottages in a parish for the accommodat