The frightfully immoral system of ganging, prevalent in Lincolnshire, is largely to be attributed to insufficient cottage accommodation. Mr Bramley, a farmer of more than 2000 acres of land, says:—"Want of cottages has given rise to the ganging system, and also to increased employment of women and children." "We want," says Mr Little, another farmer of 1700 acres, "all the children, as soon as they are old enough to be available." Few cottages, few people; every hand must be pressed into service, even mothers with infants.
Depressed by dismal scenery, oppressed by noxious vapours in summer, and cold, clammy fogs in winter, eaten up by rheumatism and ague, with homes debased and brutalised, the unhappy natives of the Fen district fill up their cup of misery by becoming opium-eaters.
"All England may be carved out of Norfolk," says an old English writer. Pasture land and arable land, heath and wood and fen, with the sea skirting two-thirds of the country; if its scenery is never grand, at least it is varied. Coke, the eminent agriculturist, turned West Norfolk from a rye-growing district into a wheat-growing one. His sheep-shearings were famous all over the civilised world. He taught the Norfolk farmers how to improve their stock, and his example led the way to most of the triumphs of modern husbandry. He is said to have raised his rents from tens to hundreds, and yet to have enriched his tenants as well as himself. Doubtless the same results have taken place on other Norfolk estates, so that the position of both landlords and farmers has vastly improved.
But what has modern improvements in husbandry done for the poor labourer? In Norfolk, the county of agricultural progress, his lot is worse than ever. At an agricultural dinner which took place at North Waltham in 1863, Mr W. Cubitt, the eminent agriculturist, thus portrayed the homes of Norfolk labourers. "They had long known," he said, "as employers of labour, that one great source of that demoralisation of which there had been such just complaints, arose from the overcrowded dwellings of the poor. In too many instances the common decencies of life were disregarded; and if the children were not contaminated, they were sent
