THE PEASANTRY. 103 



master s son was being here; that where I came from the 

 farmers would be glad to give a man like him, who could 

 * plough and sow and reap and mow as well as any other in 

 the parish,&quot; eighteen shillings a-week 



&quot; And how much beer 7&quot; 



&quot; None at all !&quot; 



&quot; None at all 7 ha, ha ! he d not go then you d not catch 

 him workin withouten his drink. No, no ! a man ould die 

 off soon that gait.&quot; 



It was in vain that we offered fresh meat as an offset to 

 the beer. There was &quot; strength,&quot; he admitted, in beef, but it 

 was wholly incredible that a man could work on it. A work- 

 ingman must have zider or beer there was no use to argue 

 against that. That &quot; Jesus Christ came into the world to save 

 sinners,&quot; and that &quot;work without beer is death,&quot; was the 

 alpha and omega of his faith. 



The labourers in this part of England (Hereford, Mon- 

 mouth, Gloucester, and Wiltshire) were the most degraded, 

 poor, stupid, brutal, and licentious, that we saw in the king 

 dom. We were told that they were of the purest Saxon 

 blood, as was indeed indicated by the frequency of blue eyes 

 and light hair among them. But I did not see in Ireland or 

 in Germany or in France, nor did I ever see among our 

 negroes or Indians, or among the Chinese or Malays, men 

 whose tastes were such mere instincts, or whose purpose of 

 life and whose mode of life was so low, so like that of domes 

 tic animals altogether, as these farm labourers. 



I was greatly pained, mortified, ashamed of old mother 

 England, in acknowledging this ; and the more so that I found 

 so few Englishmen that realized it, or who, realizing it, seemed 

 to feel that any one but God, with His laws of population 

 and trade, was at all accountable for it. Even a most intelli 

 gent and distinguished Radical, when I alluded to this ele- 



