140 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



I have been, again and again, told that a material change has 

 taken place in the condition of the farm laborers, within the last 

 fifty years, or even a much less time. The practice of forming 

 large farms, by uniting small ones, has tended to remove the 

 laborer farther from the intercourse and superintendence of his 

 employer. Being engaged in large numbers, individual interest 

 and character have been lost sight of : and, cottages on the estates 

 having been suffered to fall into decay, and not being renewed, 

 the laborers have been driven into villages, with a great restric 

 tion of their comforts, and exposed to the temptations incident to 

 such localities. The large establishments have lost that patri 

 archal character which used to belong to them ; men are em 

 ployed much more by the day, and the week, than by the year, 

 as formerly ; and are used, and thrown aside, as occasion may 

 require, like mere implements upon the farm. Those strong 

 personal ties, so favorable in their influence upon the lower classes, 

 and not without most valuable moral effects upon the higher, 

 have almost ceased to exist. It was a delightful circumstance, 

 when, formerly, without any infringement of personal liberty, a 

 laborer was considered as a fixture upon the place, and as having 

 a sort of hereditary connection with the family and the estate 

 of his employer, which only the most imperious reasons could 

 dissolve ; so men and women lived in the same service twenty, 

 thirty, fifty years, and often for the whole course of their natural 

 lives ; their children and children s children were often born 

 upon the homestead, and the interests of the master and the 

 servants became identical. As they were paid, likewise, in kind, 

 instead of money, they themselves, being, in a small way, sellers 

 of produce, became personally interested in the state of the 

 markets ; and ties of familiarity, long vicinity, and connection, 

 mutual dependence, and a mutual stake in the results of their 

 joint labor, served to connect them the more closely together. 

 No one, under these circumstances, can doubt the advantages of 

 such a relation on both sides. There are many cases, which have 

 come under my observation, where a similar connection exists, 

 though in a form very much qualified by modern manners, and 

 where individuals and families have been in the same service for 

 many long years, and the aged among them are provided for, by 

 those in whose service their lives have been passed, in the kindest 

 manner, after all power of useful or active labor has ceased 



