AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. 61 



is for a foreigner to obtain a correct knowledge or to form a fair 

 judgment of the customs and manners of any country which he 

 visits ; and especially where his residence is limited, and his 

 observations necessarily partial. Feeling no prejudices, and 

 having no private interests or partialities in the case, other than 

 those which are inseparable from an education in another condi 

 tion in society, and under political institutions differing entirely 

 from those which prevail here, I am desirous, above all things, to 

 hold my mind open to the light of further and more exact 

 inquiry. 



It does not need any long experience to learn that first impres 

 sions are not always the most correct : and every intelligent and 

 candid mind must allow that most men have some reasons 

 which, to their minds, appear sufficient for what they do that 

 many customs which have prevailed for ages, however objection 

 able at first sight they may appear to us, have grown out of 

 peculiar circumstances of time and place, which sanction their 

 expediency at the time of their origin, if not the propriety of 

 their continuance : and that, in respect to many acknowledged 

 evils, it is far more easy to deplore the existence than to point 

 out the remedy. While circumstances of this nature prompt to 

 caution and forbearance in our judgments, they do not require 

 us, at the expense of our moral sense, to regard these evils in 

 any other than their true character, to palliate either their nature 

 or extent, or to look upon them, under any circumstances, in 

 utter despair of their removal or alleviation. Nor will they 

 excuse any neglect of all proper and possible exertion to remedy 

 an acknowledged evil. 



The condition of the laboring agricultural class is certainly, in 

 many parts of England, exceedingly depressed ; and though in 

 frequent instances it may be called comfortable, in few that I 

 have seen can it be considered prosperous. Their labor is not 

 extraordinarily severe ; they are by no means treated with un- 

 kindness, or, excepting through the misfortune of the ill temper 

 of their employer, with severity ; they are decently clad, and 

 there is a great amount of active benevolence every where at work 

 to assist them, and to alleviate their distress in sickness and mis 

 fortune. But they are very poorly fed ; with many exceptions, 

 they are wretchedly lodged ; their wages are inadequate to their 

 comfortable support; and their situation affords little or no 

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