72 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



paid, he again and again stoutly refused to be drawn. " I 

 am not here to express an opinion upon that," he answered ; 

 " as a labourer I should myself want to get the best wages 

 I could." 



Again he was questioned ; again he answered : " No, 

 I am not come here to say what he ought to get. I am not 

 come here to draw the line of the labourers' wages." 



He complained of the farmers foolishly starving the land 

 of labour ; he said that 700,000 souls amongst the agricul- 

 tural labouring classes had been emigrated since 1872 ; and 

 that from 1872 to 1875 wages had increased in most counties 

 2s. and 35. a week, and in some counties, 45. Since 1877 

 wages had been lowered is., and in some counties 2s. and 

 even 35. He gave the Warwickshire wages in 1872 as 

 averaging los. to us. per week, the Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, 

 Berkshire and Hants wages as 75. to 8s., and the Somerset- 

 shire wages as 6s. to 75. exclusive of all hay and harvest 

 money. He spoke of the high rents that labourers had 

 to pay for their allotments, and considered that every 

 cottage should have a quarter of an acre attached to it. 



When he was recalled, he gave evidence that the weekly 

 subscription for trade purposes was 2^d. per week. Ques- 

 tioned again as to the minimum wage of a labourer, he 

 answered : "I should think they ought to have as much 

 money to support them outside the union workhouse as it 

 costs them inside. I say that a man who has a wife and 

 family to maintain and has to pay rent and all other expenses 

 upon a home deserves as much per head for each of his family 

 as it costs us to keep them as paupers in the workhouse. 

 . . . For a man and wife and six children costs in a work- 

 house the amount of 305. a week." 



He took care, however, to qualify this statement by say- 

 ing that he did not advocate an employer paying a man 

 with a large family 2, or a man with none at all los. a week. 

 He contended for what he called " cottage right " by the 

 same legislative means as farmers demanded tenant right. 



" The tied cottage," he said, " binds a man hand and foot. 

 If I rented a cottage from his Grace, and I paid him 4 or 5 a 

 year rent for that cottage, I ought to have the fullest liberty to 



