VIEWS ON QUESTIONS OF THE DAY 237 



and some of them very large, and of the best class 

 of servants receive much larger wages than the 

 amount I spoke of in his case. A hind will receive 

 50 a year, with a house and more or less of a 

 garden rent free ; a shepherd, 30, with i yearly 

 for his fest z>., fastening money or hiring penny. 

 A small farmer in this parish, who, like several 

 others I could name, has risen from the ranks, told 

 me the other day that he had had that amount as 

 such for the last twelve or thirteen years of his 

 service, a foreman from 24. to 25 or 26, and the 

 other farm-servants or farm-lads from 14 to 18 

 or so, according to their age and the value of their 

 services, all with their meat and house-room, except, 

 of course, the hind as spoken of." 



There was no question affecting the well-being 

 of the agricultural labourers in which he did not 

 take a real interest, and on many of these he wrote 

 at great length. 



Although strongly in favour of small holdings 

 where practicable, he ridiculed the extravagant 

 ideas of certain politicians who would extend the 

 principle indiscriminately, and thus rob Peter to 

 pay Paul. He gave vent to his views in a lively 

 little treatise on the subject in which he gave a 

 hundred reasons against what he called the " land 

 craze." Some of his reasons might be taken 

 seriously ; others were of a reductio 'ad absurdum 

 character. At the head of the title-page he quoted 

 Carlyle's well-known dictum that the population of 

 England consisted of so many millions, " the greater 



