/ 
250 Rich and Poor. [ Serr. 
now more striking and more imperative, and we believe not of so 
temporary a nature, as some would have us think ;—but let the eyes of 
the country be turned, at the sametime, upon the agricultural labourers 
—wasting and pining under the most galling and crushing misery. They 
have grown, and for years have been growing worse and worse ; they 
have been by degrees robbed of the commons ; they have been deprived 
of their scraps of land; they no longer brew; few have now a pig, or 
even a brood of chickens,—and now at last, in whole districts, are they 
receiving their scanty wages in the shape of parochial relief—And here, 
again, we trace the blessed effects of the doctrines of our Economists. 
The economist looks upon the poor as the machine, and the soil as 
the material. How can these be worked with the greatest effect ? 
This is his problem. As a breathing and moral being,—as a being 
capable of happiness, with affections, feelings, aspirations,—oh, with all 
these things he has nothing to do. He inculcates upon the stupid but 
grasping landlord his cruel and unsocial doctrines; and: the love of 
money, of splendour and of self, drives the landlord headlong into the blind 
adoption of his measures, less unfeelingly perhaps,* but-more thought- 
lessly ; and in the career of gain, he snaps the cords of affection between, 
himself and his tenant, himself and the peasant. He is told that large 
farms, for instance, are more productive than small ones,—that he can 
get higher rents from those who have larger capitals, than those who 
have only small ones. The great farmer seconds the economist, and by 
tempting the landlord carries all before him, and indemnifies himself by 
reducing the rate of his labourers’ wages. The landlord combines the 
small farms, and transfers them collectively to the wealthier tenant, and 
pitilessly brings down the poorer tenant to the condition of the labourer, 
—while the labourer, who had been blessed with an acre or two for a 
‘cow, is stripped of it, and left with nothing but his manual labour to trust 
to. The great farmer thus crushes all below him, and by reducing the 
Jabourers’ wages brings him quickly and gladly to the condition of a 
pauper, and actually pays him his reduced wages out of the poor’s-rate. 
In the country, the farmer is sole manager of the poor’s-rate, and chief 
contributor. To him, so far as money is concerned—it is the same 
thing, whether he pay wages as wages, or partly as wages, and partly as 
relief from the poor’s-rate; but the latter gives him more power; and 
power—ruffian-like—he loves almost as well as money. And thus are the 
poor ground to the dust. 
But poverty, by the indefeasible course and destiny of human events, 
is working its own cure. Manifestly there is a point of depression below 
‘which the poor cannot sink, and to that point are they rapidly approach- 
ing. Before the remnants of vigour, both of body and mind, are utterly 
‘exhausted, men will wrench from the possessors the means of life, or 
perish in the struggle. Fairly on the brink of ruin, but not. before, 
will the rich at last take the tardy alarm; and then will they make a 
tumultuous retreat, and will do precipitately, and to their own degrada- 
tion, what they might have done deliberately and to their own eternal 
honour. We will not—with these strong convictions pressing upon our 
bosoms, we cannot preach contentment to the poor, for-that is to lull the 
fears of the rich, and harden their hearts. Too long, too long, have 
they had all their own way. 3 i 
