The Agricultural Labourer. ()t^ 



The labourer himself was uneducated, having 

 little knowledge of any district outside his own 

 parish, no means of moving beyond it, while he 

 risked the loss of his legal right to the parish 

 relief in illness or old age if he left it. In such 

 circumstances it was hardly possible for the 

 agricultural labourer to attain any degree of 

 independence. There was no margin for saving, 

 no surplus out of which an enterprising man 

 could make the venture of moving his labour to 

 places in which it would command a better 

 return. And during the long period that this 

 continued, his condition was low, and still shows 

 itself in his small stature and slow gait. From 

 the pressure of this system he was at last 

 emancipated by the extension of his legal right 

 of relief from the parish to the Union, a district 

 much more extensive, and by the simultaneous 

 increase in the demand for labour arising from 

 the rapid development of the other industrial 

 resources of the country. The great extension 

 of steam communication with America, and the 

 encouragement thereby afforded to emigration, 

 drew off rapidly the surplus agricultural popula- 



