SETTLERS IN ENGLAND.
THE Register of Cheap Land published weekly by our contemporary, the County Gentleman, is a suggestive sheet. No land is offered for which more than fifteen guineas an acre is asked, and all below that price is inserted in the Register free of charge. We find in it all kinds of land, most of it of a very attractive character, with houses and buildings, offered at prices as low as 13s. per acre, the cost of an estate in the Isle of Skye, while plenty is available within fifty miles of London at from £6 10s. to £10 per acre. Land on the chalk hills, with water, houses, and roads, only four miles from a station, is going at £7 10s. per acre, freehold farms an hour from London at £3 an acre, and grassy hillside land on the Welsh mountains at £11 an acre, with woods and excellent pasturage. Fifty years ago, when a family found themselves uncomfortably short of income in England, they used to follow the hint given in Captain Marryat's story, and become " settlers in Canada." To-day they more commonly occupy a small house in a suburb. The County Gentleman's Register suggests that there is an alternative to Canada or Clapham. Even Scotland and Wales are more accessible than the Canadian backwoods, and the difference in price between cheap cleared land in our island and cleared land in a Colony does not amount to a great deal when the expenses of getting to and stocking the latter are reckoned in.
It is open to any one with a little enterprise to become a " settler in England," taking almost any of a score of counties, and to begin a healthy and happy life with far less discom- forts and natural obstacles to overcome than in a Colony, no physical separation from old ties, and with the advantages of a settled environment for the children. We are not suggest- ing that any one should move from a little suburban villa and begin fanning. Farming is a business which wants both knowledge and capital, though a little of the latter goes a long way if there is plenty of the former. But let us take a family living in a cheap suburb with some £3,000 or £4,000 in all, giving them about £150 a year, augmented by small salaries made by elder brothers or sisters as clerks or teachers, or per- haps only by the pay earned by the father in some little post in a bank or office. The narrowness of the life possible must to many persons be intolerable, and to the children, except for the pleasUre which ready access to the company of other children gives, existence is absolutely without compensation, not even that of health. If one of these families invested £1,000 in cheap land, with a house on it, at £7 per acre, they would to start with have a home of their own, and one hundred and forty-two acres of land of their own, on which there is the ascertained possibility of raising enough food to provide all the necessaries of life except groceries and clothes, not for one family, but for more. As our family are to be bond- fide " settlers " only, with the advantage of colonising in an old country, with a house ready made, roads ready made, wells dug, and fences of a sort existing, we will suppose them to start modestly by endeavouring only to provide such part of their necessaries from the land as they can safely do while they " look round" and take the measure of things. If there are growing boys and girls, they will at once find themselves fully and happily occupied, and taking their part in making the settlement a success. The house will not be like the little brick villa on the outskirts of Ealing or Tooting. Probably it will be in bad repair. The roofs may let in water, the paint be all shabby, the grates rusty, and the garden a wilderness. Only if they settled in Canada there would not be a house at all, and when made it would be about twice as uncomfortable and only made of wood. Of course they must not go to the carpenter and mason and get an " account " sent in for fifty pounds. They might do the necessary repairs themselves. The art of laying both tiles and bricks can easily be learnt by watching the men at work in the next row of villas being built in the suburbs. They do not lay bricks so fast as to dazzle the eye. It is not a difficult art, and half an hour goes a long way if people care to see and learn. The helplessness of ordinary Englishmen is never more notable than when confronted with house repairs. The writer has seen gentlemen paint their greenhouses, and ladies paint their doors and mantelpieces. But he believes no one ever saw a gentleman, or person outside the workman class, even thinking of laying a brick, or putting on a tile, jobs done by
the least skilled of labourers. Neither do they ever know how to thatch, which on one farm in the writer's knowledge /every labourer is expected to be able to do in a rough-and•ready way. If our settlers will buy a barrel or two of paint and Stockholm tar, they can soon make things neat outside. As for repairs, let them go to the nearest brickyard, buy a couple of hundred tiles and a thousand bricks, hire a cart to take them home in, mix a stone or two of mortar or Portland cement, and they can patch up the roof, mend garden walls, and have no bills, which, except for ironwork, they have no business to incur. Car- pentering of a sort any one can do. Practice will soon make it of a superior sort. But that must not be expected at first Most that needs doing yields so quickly to more energy that in a month the house and garden will be putting on a new aspect. The garden will be the first productive work under- taken, and one in which the whole family can do something. If the garden covers half an acre, it will be as much as can be managed the first year. But meantime there are the other hundred and forty-one and a half acres of land, re- ceived in some sort. of order from the seller. It way be nearly all grass land, in which case the new owner is lucky. But there is certain to be a cultivated field or two, and it is far more probable that half or three-quarters is or has been cultivated. This means farming, which is just what our settlers are not to do yet. Still, the land must not be allowed to go back into weeds, or it will be an endless job to clear it. It will be best to sow this down at once with temporary grass of some of the many kinds now supplied to suit all soils. This would have to be taken as part of the cost of purchase, for it is almost indispensable. The money will come back by selling the hay and letting off the pasturage later, and mean- while time is gained. The grass-sown fields are paying their way and taking no time, money, or labour, and the settlers can devote their energies to the garden, to planting the fruit-trees, and to forming the nucleus of a stock of animals. Milk, eggs, poultry, rabbits, honey, pork, and bacon they can have if they choose without paying for anything but what the land they own will give them without tillage, except the barley for the fowls and pigs. This they must purchase, but barley and barley-meal, made from the inferior kinds not " bright " enough for malt, is very cheap. Cobbett reckoned that eighteen quarters of barley were needed to produca the seven hundred and thirty pounds of pork and bacon which he ex- pected a family to eat, and grinding barley is now below 21s. per Quarter, just two-thirds of the price when Cobbett wrote.
It is not suggested that as yet they shall keep either a horse or a cow. They can do that later when they have learnt to manage humbler stock. A couple of milk goats, which can be tethered and give no trouble, can be had for about one twelfth of the price of a cow. They are so hardy that they never seem sick or sorry, and they will thrive on rough grass, trimmings cut from the hedges, potato peelings, or almost any- thing vegetable moister than sawdust, and will give about a couple of quarts of milk a day each,—excellent milk, with no goaty flavour, and particularly good for children. Goat's milk never gives tuberculosis. Poultry, well managed, always answer for domestic purposes, and the modern plan of keeping movable fowlhouses, which are wheeled into the fields, where the fowls pick up much food early in the morning, is wholesome and economical. There is no reason why part of the worst grass- land should not be fenced in for a rabbit farm. Rabbits are useful animals in their place. But care would have to be taken that the fencing was inexpensive, or a loss might ensue. Hutch rabbits are better to eat, larger, and easily managed. They can be fed almost entirely on " weeds," and should form part of the small stock of the colony. A few hives of bees will go a long way to make the breakfast and tea table a suceess. Honey is the only ready-made preserve, the wholesomest, and the best. In the days when sugar was unknown in England (not so many centuries ago), it was the only sweet stuff available, and the number of barrels put away for winter use was duly noted in the accounts of the King's kitchen. Now, with cheap sugar, its importance is forgotten. But this must not happen in our settlement, if they are going to work on the right lines. They will have to buy tea, coffee, soap (in Germany it would be made in the house), salt, paraffin, and coal. If they have not when making their selection of the land bought some with rough wood, fir, or ash and hazel coppice on it, they will have to buy " kindling wood " too. It is a great advantage to have a few acres of coppice on the ground. It comes in usefully every week. Let them plant willows quickly. They will grow fast and grow everywhere, and are most handy for hurdle-making, stakes, and a multitude of other things. Butchers' meat we propose that they shall always buy ; butter, cheese, and flour, too, at the outset. They need not be teetotalers. If there is an orchard they can learn to make cyder, and home-brewed beer can once more be made on pay- ment of a small license, and a set of brewing utensils is cheap.
As there will be more spare time than can be filled, the natural sequel is to clean, plough, and sow a few acres of land. The grass can be " fed off " first, and that will manure it. This is a great step, for it means agriculture, in a small way, not for sale, but for supply. The sale from surplus products is certain to come later. A horse must be borrowed and a plough and harrow bought, possibly a drill, all of which can be bought for next to nothing at farm sales. The yield of wheat and barley will soon overtake the flour and barley-meal bilL In other words, the land will now give all the bread, bacon, pork, and beer, in addition to what has been mentioned above, and cover the malt expenditure. The whole remainder of the land is available to "play with." What use it is put to will depend on the taste of the owner. But in any case it is his own. He can carry a gun over it, plant trees, rear pedigree stock in a modest way, be out of doors all day, and see his children healthy and happy and leading a natural life.
Of course, none of these things can be done by idle or feck- less people. The villa for them, not the land. Again, people naturally extravagant will make nothing of the English settler's life. They will always be buying things which they ought either to grow or make, or do without. If, however, a family are healthy and not idle, and willing not merely to work but to "rough it" and deny themselves expensive luxuries, they can, we believe, do as well here as in the Colonies. But, above all, they must not attempt to be farmers. That way ruin lies. They must merely essay to live by the land and on it, not to sell or speculate in its products. Their land must be treated as an enlarged garden for home consumption, never as a commercial farm.
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