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14 (1.) Cottages and gardens. It will at once be urged that cottages don't pay—nor do they merely as buildings, but what if a large garden be added of half an acre with fruit trees, which may be worth 3l. or 4l. beside the dwelling? If a new cottage can be built for about 100l., and with using materials on an estate (such as timber and stone) a two bedroom cottage can generally be built for about that sum, with a garden of half an acre, it might fairly be let for 5l. or even 6l.; deduct from 6l.; 15s. per annum for the value of the land, and 5s. per annum for the value of fruit trees planted, and you have a return of 5l. per annum for the outlay of 100l., or 5 per cent. Where two or three cottages are built together, they might be put up for less, or one extra bedroom thrown in for the same sum. If half the garden be planted with thirty or forty fruit trees (apples or damsons) it will almost pay the rent of the whole. Good fruit trees, after a few years, may be worth from 2s. to 3s. per annum. The labour to be expended on the garden obtained, as it will be at odd hours snatched, perhaps, from the public-house, need not be reckoned in this calculation.

In the case of an old cottage the return would not be so clear, since the rent of the cottage, as it stands, must be deducted; but in these cases it will generally be found that the cottage has been run up by some former tenant, and even here by the addition of a garden or allotment, a return of 3 per cent, might be obtained on a new cottage. The money can be advanced by some of the land improvement companies at about 6 per cent, repayable in twenty-five years; and though a landlord might not be able suddenly to rebuild a number of cottages out of income, he will not find the interest on the money in excess of the return of rent so heavy as to debar him from gradually improving all on his estate; and against this is to be placed the elevation of the labourer, and the economic necessity of their being housed for the cultivation of the land. There is involved here, however, a slightly complicated economic question. The landlord of farms is obliged necessarily to provide cottages for the labourers on the farm as much as buildings for the farmer. That they must then be looked on practically as part of the landlord's outlay on the farm. When let, as they generally are, at non-remunerative prices, they are actually let in supplementation or part payment of wages; but in such an arrangement an injustice is done to the other owners of cottages, and yet more to the tenants in the neighbourhood, namely, those built independently of any farm ownership. This ought not, strictly speaking, to be; a cottage should be made to pay a fair rent, and the mode in which the difficulty is here sought to be solved is, by the garden or allotment system, which is easier to the large landlord than to the smaller cottage speculator.

(2.) Land.—A great deal that is fallacious and absurd has been written chiefly by theorists and closet agriculturists, about peasant proprietorships, and "la petite culture;" for any one with practical knowledge of the subject is aware that the cottier or petty farmer