Page:The reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (IA b21971961 0001).pdf/156

118 rank of life, in proof of the utility of the measures, which Lord Winchilsea has adopted for the benefit of his cottagers. There are two circumstances which I learnt upon inquiry, and which I think will shew that the benefit I have stated, was not local or partial, but diffused over his estate; one, that the rate collected for the relief of the poor, in his three parishes, is not so much on an average, as an annual six-pence in the pound; the other, that his cottagers' rents, for their cottages and little closes of ground, are, of all his rents, the earliest and best paid; and that there has been no arrear of them for several years.

There was an air of content and gratitude, marked in the countenances, and expressed in the language of all the cottager that convinced me that what had been done for them by their landlord, had not only made them more happy, and improved their means of subsistence, but that it had had very beneficial effects on the heart and the morals. The advantages,