Canon Girdlestone on Wednesday read a paper to the British
Association on the condition of the labourers, whom he described as living on 8s. a week, in crowded cottages, and tied down to the soil. We have noticed his recommendations elsewhere, but his statements called forth the usual storm of contradictions. Of these the boldest was that of Mr. Read, M.P., who said the labourer got as much as he was worth ; and the most important that of Sir Willoughby Jones, who made a really noteworthy point. The cottagers, he said, must not be prohibited from taking in lodgers. If they were, the labourers would be compelled to marry at eighteen merely to get their food cooked and their clothes washed, and thus could save nothing before they married. No bachelor life is pos- sible to labourers living by themselves. That is true, and is too often forgotten ; but that does not prove it to be unadvisable to restrict the number of lodgers.
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