1831.] Affairs in Generat. 309 



three vols. ;" •will have become home-sick, and be in the High Street of 

 Edinburgh, receiving the congratulations of the Scotch world on his 

 return, and with a lease of ten years' additional life in his cerebellum. 

 We wish the baronet well, and have given him, in this instance, advice 

 worth aU the scribblings of the CoUege of Physicians. / pedc faiisto. 



We would not give sixpence for the brains of any man who can 

 hesitate a moment about the causes of the riots, rick-burning, and other 

 sullen savageries, that from time to time disfigure the character of 

 country life in England. The whole and sole cause is the same one 

 which would make a lord of the privy-council mutinous, or a groom of 

 the bed-chamber question the propriety of the civil list within ear-shot 

 of his sovereign : it is hunger. There is no instance on record within 

 these hundred years, where, when the common people were sufficiently 

 employed, they exhibited any discontent whatever. Give the English 

 labourer employment enough to clothe and feed him decently, and he 

 will no more rebel, not read incendiary nonsense, nor set fire to his 

 master's barns, than the honest bullock that he drives afield. And this 

 is not the result of his silliness, but of his good sense; and if those who 

 have the lives and labours of the peasantry in their hands, and who live 

 from hour to hour upon the industry of those poor men, were to take 

 but half the care of them that they do of their ox and their ass, we 

 should hear no more of peasant-tumult in England than we hear of it 

 in the Georgium Sidus. 



The Hampshire Advertiser, a well informed paper upon those points, 

 thus states the case at present. 



" The farmers are again reducing men's wages down to the old point ; and it 

 is feared that, unless something is done to relieve the distress, serious conse- 

 quences will arise during the next winter. It is asked. Low can farmers afford 

 to give the wages demanded while they are paying such enormous high rents ? 

 But the fact cannot be concealed, that there is scarcely a farm or a small piece 

 of ground to be ler, but there are from 20 to 30 applicants, bidding one against 

 the other, giving from 2l. to 3/. per acre for what had just let for 30s. While 

 the farmers pursue this course, how can they afford to pay their men adequately 

 for their labours ?" 



For taking their lands at such rates we cannot blame the farmers, 

 who, we may fairly presume, would take them cheaper if they could. 

 But we blame the landlords, who are foolish and cruel enough to let 

 their lands at prices which no farmer can pay without robbing his 

 labourers. Of all the symptoms of national decline, that which seems to 

 us the most formidable is this fierce spirit of Mammon, this furious and 

 short-sighted avarice which makes the landlord think only of forcing 

 the highest penny from the land. In the better times of England, the 

 yearly tenant was almost as secure of his tenure as the lord of his title. 

 Generation after generation flourished on the same farm, and with it 

 flourished a generous feeling of protection on the part of the landlord^ 

 and a generous feeling of attachment on the part of the tenant. The case 

 is now beginning to be scandalously the contrary. The landlord and his 

 tenant are two land-huxters, the one straining all points to secure a high 

 rent, the other straining all points to pay the lowest wages possible to 

 his labourers. The labourer must take what he can get, or he must 

 starve — he takes wages which scarcely keep soul and body together, he 

 grows sullen, and desperate, and then is ready for Captain Swing. As 



