56 FRANCIS ORPEN MORRIS 



With such displays of unbridled barbarity before him 

 he was the last man to remain passive. He spoke of 

 what went on as the " crying evils of this scandalous 

 system. A system of unmitigated badness a very 

 gehenna of corruption. Many are led astray with- 

 out any actual bad intention by the influence of the 

 company they are in ' good company/ as they hear 

 it called, but the worst of company if judged by its 

 consequences. How many then first begin what 

 becomes a habit of intoxication ! And do even their 

 masters lose nothing in their property from such 

 a habit ? Do they lose nothing in the county rates 

 raised to keep up the prisons filled with prisoners 

 who have learnt their first and last lesson of crime 

 amid those very scenes ? Do they lose nothing in 

 the contamination of their own children or of them- 

 selves by bringing a polluted stream among them ? 

 Does not the whole neighbourhood surfer ? " 



As a remedy for these evils he proposed the 

 establishment of a register office for farm servants 

 in every market town, and that farmers should take 

 no servant into their service except from such offices, 

 and none from them without a character obtained 

 there, furnished by their former master or mistress, 

 or from the clergyman and schoolmaster of their 

 parish, if they had not been out to service before. 



Owing to the difficulty of getting the farmers to 

 combine, this proposal was never carried into effect ; 

 though in later years he was instrumental in hiring 

 a room in his own market town of Pocklington, to 

 which the female servants could resort for the purpose 



