LABOURERS' COTTAGES.
[TO FITZ mane OF TOR "SPECTATOR:] SIR,—On the subject of labourers' cottages it seems commonly assumed that either the landlord or the tenant must have the entire control of them, at least after they are once built ; choosing the occupier, keeping or turning him out, fixing and receiving the rent, doing the repairs. It appears to me that this need not be so, and that practically a medium course is the best.
With regard, indeed, to the question who the occupier should be,
I cannot see how anyone can doubt that the farmer must decide it. I am speaking of ordinary cottages appended to farms, and every- one will admit that the proper plan is that each farm should have cottages for as many labourers as it wants for due cultivation, and that the labourers should live in those cottages.
But these labourers are the farmers' servants, doing his work ; and how can anyone hut he tell whether they are such as he wants, and that not only when they are first chosen, but as long as they remain ? What can the landlord or his agent, living, perhaps, miles away, and not seeing the daily work, know about it? It seems to me that they might as well claim to choose and dismiss the tenant's domestic servants as his farm-labourers.
Also, it is idle to attempt to fix for the tenant the conditions on which he shall keep a given labourer. Whoever the labourer pays the rent to, if it is below the fair value of the house, it must eventually lower his wages pro Santo. And as for other conditions, it is said that farmers are sometimes tyrannical, and will not allow reasonable indulgences to a labourer, such as keeping a pig ; but such cases must surely be too exceptional to need attention.
But all the rest, I conceive, is best in the landlord's hands. He should build the cottages, keep them in repair, allot sufficient garden-ground, fix and receive the rent,—on no theory, but on the most convenient plan in practice. I also assume, what is gene- rally allowed, that this will never pay as a commercial transaction; but will ultimately benefit all parties by the production of a good and serviceable and contented class of labourers.
The due repair of cottages especially ought to be the landlord's business, for the plain reason that he and his agent ought to be really good judges of what a good cottage and due repair are,—a point on which farmers have sometimes very inadequate notions.
It is true that many landlords cannot, and even after an im- provement in the law would not, be able to do what 1 have said. So much the worse : I have only spoken of -what seems in itself
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