As often as not they are personal friends of the
lord of the manor, near neighbours, or living on his property, knowing or hearing about his reduced income and the burden of his unlet farms. In these circumstances, it is obviously a difficult matter for him to condemn the miserable cottages on the estate, which would not be left as they are another day if he had the courage to speak out. If sanitary inspectors were not local and tongue-tied agents, the cottages which are unfit for habitation would be denounced without a scruple, and the landlord, who in his impoverished state is, nevertheless, able to take a house in town, or go for a run abroad with one or two of his daughteri, would then have to face the question of either improving the dwellings, or seeing the property become waste for want of people to cultivate it. I could name villages where the mere passer-by can see the broken roofs, and the windows stuffed with rags, without going into the horrors of drainage or other more im- portant improvements. In hilly districts, where water is scarce, tho wretched people have to catch what rain-water they can. When the cottages are thatched this is most unwholesome and impure. I remarked once upon the want of a bit of zinc roof or other material than thatch for this reason, and was told that "they had always got along without it, and must continue to do so." It is quite certain that the insanitary, cold, damp, wretched cottages which the poor people in remote agricultural districts have to live in compare most unfavourably with the little rows of houses on the outskirts of towns ; and that a few hundreds a year spent upon the country cottages would, in my opinion, bring about an improved condition, which would benefit the landlord as much as the people who live in them.
—I am, Sir, &c., INSPECTOR.
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