CONDITION OF THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1391, 25 April 1865, Page 8

CONDITION OF THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.

(From the Morning Star, Jan. 18.)

A controversy, addressing itself to the question of the agricultural labourer's condition has lately occupied some space in our columns. It was opened by Mr. William Hargreaven, who contended that "to

those not blinded by custom" there is " far more of the tragic than of the comic" about the «' birth, life, and death of an English peasant," Mr. Hargreaves asked, " Where is the good of talking to men in the receipt of ten shillings a week about educating their children, or to the wives of such men about making their homes attractive?" A correspondent, who described himself as "A Hertfordshire Farmer," proposed to answer Mr. Hargreaves. But the " Hertfordshire Farmer " only reconstructed the old poetic English villager out of the depths of his moral consciousness. According to him the farm labourer has frequently 20s a week; in hay-time and harvest 255, or even 30s. He has a comfortable four-roomed house wounderfully cheap; he can get grists at a low rate-and the"HertfordshireFarmer"thinkßgrists more nutritious than marketable wheat—he has plenty of rich milk; he has the privilege (not always respected by country justices) of gathering turnips from the master's fields; he knows he will be provided for in old age—in the workhouse, we presume. Added to all these advantages comes the inestimable privilege enjoyed by the English peasants that" in the morning they are welcomed forth by the carolling of the lark; they are daily in the enjoyment of the beauties of natures the blue sky, the green fields, the waving corn, the shady foliage, the hill, the dale, and the flowing brook are constantly before them." This is indeed the good old styte. This is the British labourer as he might have been described in " Sandford and Merton." This show* as thorough an appreciation of the mental and physical condition of poor Hodge as Goldsmith hud of Irish Faddy when he wrote of sweet Auburn; a# Thomson had of a pair of rural English lovers when he drew Miss Musidora and Damon, her swain; as a man might obtain of the goitred inhabitants of an Alpine Tillage who rested his faith upon the picturesque youths and maidens, all straw-ltat. blue silk, white muslin, and fluttering ribbons, who range through Helvetia's mountain bowers, in front of the foot-lights in " Sonnambula." A correspondent, who writes from Buckingham, harshly dispell the pleasing pastoral, and insist# upon it that Mr. Hargreaves' less agreeable picture has the reality if it lias the sternness of the photograph. He the British Corydon as a poor, ignorant, hard-working, badlyfed man, exhausted from trying to feed many mouths on small wages; the English Thyrsis as a broken-down miserable drudge, prematurely aged by poverty and ceaseless toil, and, it may be, foul air and all the unspeakable miseries of an overcrowded hovel. Wo own that our impressions harmonize only too sadly with those of Mr. Hargreaves and the correspondent from Buckingham. We fear that the British labourer is rather what blue-books and the reports of faithful newspaper correspondents, anu the testimony of countless other reliable and indeed of common expei-lende, d«?«eribe mm, than that which Goldsmith and the " Hertfordshire Farmer" would have him to be. " I KWiw "u agricultural labourers well," said 1 rofessor Faw' only last week, •' and I ask what is their condition? It is this—that their wage# are so small that tney are insufficient to provide them with the care necessaries of life. They live in dwellings which scarcely deserve the name of human habitat•Their wages are so small that no parent can aff to send hia children to school, and the consequence of this is that, in spite of our vast educational grants, in spite of the enormous sums voted for educatiio , _ say that the agricultural iuhourers ftrc parents cannot afford to keep their children at school. The result of this is that the whole of

i agricultural population i« growing up in a state of absolute ignorance." How does the same speaker , describe the prospect oflbrod to the English labourer P Thus: "He ha# to pass a life of toll for wages which are scarcely sufficient to provide him with the; bare necessaries of life, and when his strength i» exhausted and his vigour spent, all he has to come to is to bo buffeted about by relieving officers and to come as a suppliant mendicant to claim parish relief." These are melancholy words. The chief source of their melancholy in, wo fear, their truth. How is the condition of the English labourer to be bettered ? To talk to him of improving his condition by energy and self-reliance, is only to recommend him to make bricks without straw. To preach to him patienco and resignation may bo more appropriate, but will hardly help him to a better life, here, at least. Ignorant and poor he is born. Ignorant and poor he lives and dies. Ho has too often the place and the toil, without the security, of the serf. The magic of property, " which converts sand into gold," is not for hini. No one denies or doubts that that magic of property would redeem him, but our legislators do not seem to have the courage even to talk over the possibility of one day opening up to him the chance of obtaining it, In no country where the labourer owns his land, or has a direct share of permanent interest in it, or even a fair chance of acquiring property in it, does he sink to the condition which ho bears in England. Even in countries where revolution has succeeded revolution, invasion has followed invasion, and masters have been changed with each battlefield, the patient and profitable labour of a peasant proprietary has kept the tiller of the soil from degenerating into a pauper or having to. wander abroad as an outcast. "The negro of the United States," says Mr. Hargreaven, " will probably be enfranchised before the English labourer." Yes, and we may add that the Russian who was yesterday a serf will probably be educated, independent, and comfortable before the English labourer. While we in England shrink in alarm from even approaching whatis vaguely termed "the land question," foreign nations stand amazed at our apathy, and speak of our rural populations with blended pity and contempt. We are ready enough in England to sneer at other political systems than our own, but we should at least remember, as Professor Fawcett tells. us, that in some of these countries at which we sneer " there is no poverty, that there is no ignorance, that there are no poor-laws, that there no. man can say he has worked for life as hard as the human frame can work, and when his labour is done that he has not a five-pound note to. maintain him in old age or in aickntss."