30 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



class, and knew that it would be a great upheaval. Mr. 

 Edwards says it was Mrs. Arch who persuaded her husband 

 to respond to the call. His hesitation was natural, for he 

 tells us that as he walked the muddy lanes towards Welles- 

 bourne he recalled the transportation of the six men who 

 formed a labourers' union in Dorsetshire. Perhaps he 

 also imaged the brutal hangings of 1831 on manufactured 

 evidence, and the end of many a village Hampden who had 

 left his bones on the shores of Botany Bay. But just as 

 starving men were willing to risk hanging for sheep-stealing, 

 so half-starving men, as Arch described them, were willing 

 to risk the boycott, the lock-out, and even imprisonment to 

 raise themselves above the line of abject poverty. No 

 one knew the trials of the farm worker better than Arch. 

 He had lived on barley bread in the year that Cobbett died, 

 because his father had refused to sign a petition against the 

 abolition of the Corn Laws, and but for his mother's earnings 

 he might have starved outright. He said he had often 

 thought about the conditions of labourers whilst thrashing 

 a hedge with a hook, or tramping many a mile in search of 

 work, though, as for himself, he had left 95. a week behind 

 him for many a year, since he was famed for his skill as a 

 hedge-cutter. 



During the golden years dating from 1852, which accord- 

 ing to some authorities ran on until 1874, the British farmers 

 " prospered exceedingly, assisted largely by good seasons." 1 

 It was the period of which Gladstone said the prosperity of 

 the country was advancing by " leaps and bounds." 



During the 'fifties and 'sixties, not only did good harvests 

 succeed each other with clockwork regularity, but farmers 

 had the benefit of their fields being drained by pipes, which 

 Peel was responsible for in 1846 in his measure of Govern- 

 ment Drainage Loan to landlords at 6 per cent. ; and land- 

 lords were not behindhand in raising their rents, which they 

 increased by 20 per cent. 2 



The farmers, too, began to reap the benefit of discoveries 

 in fertilisers such as ground bones, guano, superphosphates 



1 A Short History o English Agriculture, by W. H. R. Curtler. 

 * English Farming, by R. E. Prothero. 



