FISCAL POLICY AND AGRICULTURE 373 



reasonable as to attract the attention of the Press, and 

 the passing condemnation of the pubHc." (Illustrative 

 cases are here quoted.) "In the Report of the Royal 

 Commission issued in 1882, the general conclusions 

 arrived at are that 'the labourers were never in a better 

 position,' that 'they have better cottages, higher wages, 

 and less work,' that 'during the recent depression the 

 labourer has been best off,' that there has been 'con- 

 siderable deterioration in the quality of labour,' that 

 ' there is not the same sympathy and not the same in- 

 clination to do anything he is not obliged to do for his 

 employer,' and that 'labourers' unions have not only 

 succeeded in disturbing, but have destroyed the good 

 feeling which once existed.' 



" These favourable conclusions, however, are hardly 

 warranted by the facts given in the evidence on which 

 they are founded. Though the sources of information 

 are landowners, tenant farmers, factors, land survey- 

 ors, and employers of labour generally, yet a close 

 examination of the mass of evidence given reveals a 

 state of things of a painful character, and which, if 

 studied by the general public, could not fail to awaken 

 feelings of pity and sympathy. It is shown that the 

 labourers are badly housed, their wages insufficient to 

 keep a family or provide for bodily wants, to say 

 nothing of sickness and loss of work. The hard lot of 

 our peasantry is, as a rule, accepted by them patiently 

 and in silence, and their sufferings are but little known 

 outside their circle. The life of a labourer may be 

 said to be one long grind of human toil, even when 

 he escapes sickness and loss of work. With no plea- 

 sure in the present, and the horizon of his future 

 bounded only by the workhouse and the grave, he 

 works on to the end, to escape the ' parish ' which he 

 dreads. Strength, however, fails at last, and then he 

 has to rely on a scanty outdoor relief, or he goes into 

 the ' House.' In due time he is reported dead, and 

 so ends a life of toil, in which he has added (who shall 



