66 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



report, &quot; by many years^ of faithful servitude&quot; I confess, as I 

 said on the occasion to the noble president, this term sounded 

 harshly to my ear, and the more, if it expressed their true con 

 dition. Go where they will, the same barriers impede their 

 advance ; and if the ambition of wealth, or rank, or influence, 

 of which they see such glittering examples continually passing 

 before them, should ever dawn in their minds, it would kindle 

 only to be extinguished under inexorable circumstances. 



There are persons who see in this condition no evil nor hard 

 ship. I am not about to expatiate upon its evils or hardships, 

 if evils or hardships there be in it. If, in the present condition 

 of society, pecuniary gain is to be the only worthy object of 

 pursuit, and a pecuniary standard the only rule by which the 

 goods of life are to be measured, and the human frame is to be 

 regarded as only so much organized flesh and bone to be worked 

 np at our pleasure into the means of wealth and luxury, then 

 the improvement of the character and condition of the laboring 

 classes is not a subject to attract the attention of the political 

 economist, excepting so far as the perfection of the machine may 

 conduce to the increased amount of the work to be accomplished 

 by it. But, if a better rule is to prevail, and men are to feel 

 their moral responsibility to each other, and the physical comfort 

 of those by whose toil we live, and the moral improvement of 

 those upon whom, as well as upon their more favored brethren, 

 God has equally impressed his own moral image, are to be cared 

 for, the condition of the laboring classes deserves the most serious 

 attention and the most cordial interest of every man who has a 

 spark of patriotism, public spirit, or philanthropy in his bosom. 



This attention is now given, in various parts of the country, 

 by many persons of distinguished benevolence and active useful 

 ness, who know no higher pursuit, and find no richer pleasure, 

 than in doing good. They are not willing, while they enjoy the 

 loaf, to put their laborers off with merely the tinder crust, and 

 not always enough of that. 



The census of Great Britain reports the number of laborers 

 employed in agriculture at 887,167, and these, with their fami 

 lies, compose a population of not less than 3,500,000, or one fifth 

 of the whole population of the kingdom. The wages of labor, 

 according to the reports of the committees of Parliament, vary, 

 in different counties, from 7s. sterling to 12s. per week; and the 



