84 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



meetings to cripple me. They gave them 53. and a gallon of 

 beer each ; but it so happened that a new line was being cut to 

 South Lynn and all the navvies knew me the majority of them 

 had come off the land on to the line. One day the ganger went 

 to Lynn to draw the money to pay the men, and on his way he 

 called in at a public house, and overheard the men who had been 

 sent down by the Tories discussing the best way to pay me out. 

 That night he told the navvies what he had heard, and they all 

 attended my meeting armed with sticks. When the Tory crowd 

 commenced to set about me, the navvies went for them and 

 thrashed them most unmercifully, and the Tory roughs with 

 the navvies' mark on them were regularly cowed and slunk off 

 out of the way. I remember I rode through Lynn to the Town 

 Hah 1 in a donkey cart ; and after the poll had been declared, 

 when I rose to thank the electors for the honour they had con- 

 ferred upon me, I said that while my opponents with carriages, 

 horses, servants, and all their aristocratic paraphernalia had 

 failed to accomplish their object, Joseph and his brethren had 

 accomplished their object with a donkey cart. That humble 

 donkey had drawn me on to triumph and a majority of 600." 1 



Arch was very proud of the fact that Sandringham was 

 in his constituency. " I said to myself," he wrote, " Joseph 

 Arch, M.P., you see to it that neither the prince nor the 

 labourers have cause to be ashamed of you." 



He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons 

 in January, 1886, when he opposed Chaplin's Allotment Bill. 

 His speech was characteristic of him : 



" Honourable gentlemen have said that about a quarter of an 

 acre is sufficient for a working man in a village. There may be 

 some working men such as shepherds and carters who perhaps 

 would be contented with a rood of ground ; but I venture to say 

 that a very large number of the labourers in Norfolk and I am 

 speaking now from my own experience in that county would 

 only be too glad if they could rent an acre or two at a fair market 

 price. On the other hand, I do not find any human or Divine 

 law which would confine me as a skilled labourer to one rood of 

 God's earth. If I have energy, tact, and skill by which I could 

 cultivate my acre or two, and buy my cow into the bargain, I 

 do not see any just reason why my energies should be crippled 

 and my forces held back, and why I should be content as an 

 agricultural labourer with a rood of ground and my nose to the 

 grindstone all the days of my life." 2 



1 Joseph Arch i The Story of his Life told by Himself. 

 1 Ibid. 



