LABOUR. 277 



there is kindness and kindness. And things move slowly 

 in the country. The force of habit is great. " I have 

 never paid more than that ; that is a good wage," seems 

 a conclusive argument to the employer who has the whip- 

 hand — all the more when other commodities besides labour 

 become dear and corn is cheap. Also, the farmer's fairness 

 was generally of a condescending kind. His kindness was 

 often marked by a haughty patronisingness, which lost 

 it much of its grace. It was all yielded as a concession 

 which might be withheld, a matter of goodwill, not a matter 

 of bargaining. Labour had held its head up once. And it 

 remembered the day. The man who worked, who clipped 

 the farmer's hedge, who reaped his corn, had had his own 

 little home, with a garden to it, and it might be, a field 

 and a right of common, upon which he kept his cow and a 

 few geese. He felt a free man then — free to bargain for 

 his labour, a man poorer than his employer, but of the same 

 flesh and blood, and having the same interests. And in 

 such position he did not feel degraded. However, with the 

 enclosure of the common and the resulting necessity to sell 

 his house and field, a change had come over our man's 

 position. Labourers had come to be looked upon as a 

 distinct, inferior caste, almost as made of different clay, 

 born to a Gibeonite lot, called upon by Providence to toil 

 toil, toil, like horses walking their rounds in their gear, with 

 nothing to look for beyond — no rise, no independence, no 

 comfortable old age — doomed to pinch and toil on to the 

 bitter end. 



In Mr. Prothero's words, the treatment accorded to him 

 had " impressed the labourer with the feeling that he is 

 not regarded as a member of the community, but only as 

 its helot." The author of the old familiar Latin doggerel 

 seemed to have reflected the sense of the great mass of 

 employers when he described rustic folk as best — that is, 

 most convenient to be dealt with — when they have cause to 

 "weep," and worst when they have cause to " smile." ^ 



1 Rustica gens 

 Optima flens, 

 Pessima ridens. 



