40 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



it was not warmly welcomed by other distinguished men. 

 The Duke of Marlborough, addressing his tenant farmers, 

 told them that the discontent amongst the labourers was 

 " brought about by agitators and declaimers, who had, 

 unhappily, too easily succeeded in disturbing the friendly 

 feeling which used to unite the labourer and his employer 

 in mutual feelings of generosity and confidence." One 

 wonders if the Duke had ever heard of the Labourers' Revolt 

 of 1830 ? And Sir Charles Adder ley, M.P., expressed sur- 

 prise that " ignorant demagogues told agricultural labourers 

 to demand from their masters a market price for their 

 labour." 



Early in December a meeting was held in London at Exeter 

 Hall. Mr. Samuel Morley, who had contributed 500 to- 

 wards the Warwickshire Union, took the chair, and amongst 

 those present on the platform were Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., 

 Sir C. Trevelyan, Sir John Bennett, Mr. Mundella, M.P., 

 Cardinal Manning, Mr. Tom Hughes, M.P., and Mr. Charles 

 Bradlaugh. 



An incident happened during harvest time of this year 

 which bore a sinister aspect to many working men. When 

 the labourers in August struck for an increase of wages the 

 officers in Oxfordshire and Berkshire placed the soldiers at 

 the disposal of the farmers for the purpose of getting in the 

 harvest and defeating the Union. The London Trades 

 Council the next year successfully exerted itself to stop 

 troops being "lent " to farmers and procured a fresh regula- 

 tion explicitly prohibiting for the future such a system " in 

 cases where strikes or disputes between farmers and their 

 labourers exist." 



It is really amazing that during the course of a year 

 as many as 71,835 labourers should have joined the Union, 

 when one considers not only their poverty, their chronic 

 indebtedness to the village grocer, but also their position, 

 which was akin to a subject race under employers and land- 

 lords who still exercised enormous powers as magistrates, as 

 Poor Law guardians and as dispensers of charities. The 

 hand of oppression became heavy when landlords and 



1 Standard, September 19, 1873. 



