CAUSES OF DISTRESS REMEDIAL AGENCIES. 545 



The links which had bound him with the higher classes of rural 

 society were gone namely, the yeoman and the small farmer ; and 

 this was a serious injury to his social condition. With them he had 

 mingled on terms of equality, labouring in conjunction with, and 

 deriving great benefits from, such association. It gave a sense of 

 respectability and importance, and was a powerful stimulus to in- 

 dustry and correct morals. But these were gone, and with them 

 also a considerable part of his labour. Had the change rested here, 

 the labourer might have been saved, but it did not. Home Manu- 

 facture, previous to 1800, was almost universal : hardly one cottage, 

 and certainly not one farm-house, but had its loom, its distaff, and 

 spinning-wheel. The progress of mechanism soon made itself felt 

 amongst our cottage manufacturers. The adaptation of steam-power, 

 first to spinning, and then to weaving, destroyed this most useful of 

 all kinds of domestic industry. Human labour, when used in the 

 desultory and somewhat imperfect manner it always was used by 

 these primitive manufacturers, could not compete with mechanism ; 

 and the shuttle became silent, and the spinning-wheel was thrown 

 aside as lumber ; and thousands of cottage homes, scattered throughout 

 the midland and agricultural counties, ceased this branch of in- 

 dustry. This misfortune was still further increased by the new mode 

 of Manufacturing requiring certain local advantages, found only in 

 particular districts ; and hence mechanism has destroyed the entire 

 sum of home labour, except in its immediate vicinity. It might be 

 supposed, perhaps, that mechanism, if it did thus locate itself in par- 

 ticular districts, would make some compensation for its wholesale 

 destruction of Cottage Manufacture, by benefitting its immediate 

 neighbours. The statement contained in our last number, under the 

 head of " Hand-Loom Weavers," is a sufficient exemplification of 

 this point. 



Joined to a diminution of demand for his labour, and the abs- 

 traction of his home industry, other causes were at the same time at 

 work to lower the character and debase the condition of the labourer. 

 With the large farms and inclosures, disappeared his garden-plot. 

 Formerly the legislature remembered that we had a peasantry, 

 and it wisely thought that this peasantry was worthy some attention ; 

 a mark of wisdom, we grieve to say, long since banished from 

 Cabinets. In extending its protection also to this class of men, the 



