THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.

Waikato Times, Volume III, Issue 172, 14 June 1873, Page 3

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.

Thk condition of the agricultural labourer baa occupied public attention more or less ever since the conclusion of the ► great war. Before tlmt period his fortunes would appear to undergone numerous fluctuations. But we doubt, upon the whole, whether they ever hare been lower than 'they were during the firit forty years of the nineteenth cent ury, and the last ten years of the eighteenth. We can trace him through good and evil fortune up to the days of the Plantagoneti j but a.t the worst he does not seem over to hare verged even on such a state of indigence as fell upon him between the chaos of the American war and rhnt awakening of the upper c'aises to a renewed sense of their 1 social duties which commenced about forty years ago. Without wearying outip?aders at this sta*e of the question with array of figurdT, it may be sufficient to «tate that duriag Wtbe first half of the reign of George 111., two causes came simultaneously into operation which exercised a very depressing influence on the condition of tiw peasantry ; a great rite in prices without a corresponding rise in wagea, and a aeries of Enclosure Acts without any compensation at all. ' To what causes the ri»e in prices may have been duo ie a disputed point j for Tooke, in hia history of prices, denies that war has any tendency to raise them. But rise they did. At the accession of George 111. meat was S\& a pound, cheese - the same, butter 6d, wheat under 30s a> quarter, eoitage rent from 20s to 25* a-year, and the cottager had his share of the common for his cow, pig, poultry, and fowl. In 1792 the common had mostly disappeared ; meat wa« 8d a pound, butter 9d, wheat 40* a quarter, and rent about £1 15s a yew. In the former period, the labourer had on an average 7s a week, and 10s at harvest. In the latter, he had on an averW «je 8s a wask, and 18s in harvest. TLm whib the incrense in the cost of living was more than one-third, the increase in weekly wages was only one-eighth, while th» supplemented sources of income afforded by the commons had been cut off. The numorous Enclosure Acts which were passed between 1760 and 1774 deprived the peasantry of the only equivalent which they still possessed for the land which they had formerly cultivated. In the feudal time* the ag'icultural labourers were generally also small cultivators, and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth tluir claim to a certain quantity of ' land was recognised by an Act of Parliament, which decreed that no cottage should be erected without four acres of land attached, to it. In 1648, special attention was called to the Act by the judge at York assizes. "It is probablo, however," says the writer we have just quoted, " that by the acceasion v of George 111 the ordinary labourer had ceased, as a rule, to be a cultivator of the soil on his own account ; but he still enjoyed to the full his right of common. But when, almost at one and the same moment, the rights of common were lost and the coat of living was increased, a rapid revolution took place. Those who had small freeholds were obliged I to sell them ; those who had derived from their daily labour, and from the cow, the pig, and the poultry which 1 roamed over the adjoining common, a comfortable and substantial livelihood, found themselves reduced to penury. The yeoman sank into a peasant, aud the peasant tank into a pauper. And from that time to this the position of the agricultural labourer has uever recoveted itself." Nor has! poetry always lent itself to exaggerations of rural felicity. There are lines ia Orabbe's "Village" which only too clearly indicate the change which had- come over the condition of the peasantry during the period which between the days of Goldsmith and his own. He contrasts the fancied happiuess of peasant life with the •tern reality — " Or will you praise that homely, healthy fare, Plenteous an-1 plain, which happy peasants share J Oh, trifle not with wants you cannot feel, Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal. Homely, not wholesome ; plain, not plenty ; mch As* you who praise would never deign to touch." The system of allotment grounds was the first effort made toward* compensating the labourer for what he had thus lost ; and at these have been, gradually extended, his position has proportionately improved. Wages also have risen within the last few year* : according to Mr Bailey Denton, as much as 20 per ceut within the last tiirty-ftve years.