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…….Day labourers have no
leisure for attending to the cultivation of any extent of land, and
therefore a small garden for potatoes, for cabbages, and other pot herbs,
is perfectly sufficient for the accommodation in each. Anything
further would break in upon their time of labour for hire; and the farm
work Berwickshire is fully sufficient, in all seasons, are all that are
willing to work.
For grazing the cows of such villagers as choose to have that
accommodation, small grass fields may always be hired yearly, in this
county, in the neighbourhood of every town and village; and it is now
very common to the villagers to form clubs or copartneries, for taking
such pasture fields at the annual auctions, for their cows and horses.….
Were a day labourer provided in a cows grass, and land cultivation at an
undervalue, besides the obvious loss to the proprietor, it would, for the
most part render him lazy, and useless to the neighbourhood; he would
either be in constant miserable poverty, from his indolence, or so
Independent that he would have used to work, unless paid much beyond the
average wages. To make in a small farmer at an adequate rent, would
deprive the tenantry of his labour altogether, and would force them
to work far beyond the ordinary exertions, to enable him to live in
misery, and to pay the ordinary rents……
Even the usefulness of cow keeping in small villages, is
necessarily limited to the demand for milk; and it has happened
frequently from the supply being beyond the demand, that village cows
have not nearly paid their expences. In every parish in the
justices ought rigidly to debar the keeping of cows or courses by such
cottagers as have not taken adequate pasture for their regular
maintenance. As some, under pretence of pasturing by roadsides, are
guilty of great depredations on the neighbouring farmers; turning in
their cattle under night, even into hayfields and standing corn, and
stealing clover, hay and corn sheaves.
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