Fortunes for Farmers 



higher wages by the repressive Combination 

 Laws, to transportation for life for entering a wood 

 in search of food or fuel; demoralised by a system 

 of rate-aided wages which made a pauper of 

 nearly every labourer, were starved at last into 

 the revolt of 1830, when large gangs driven to 

 desperation marched about the Southern counties 

 smashing threshing machines, and demanding 

 a minimum wage of two shillings a day — a wage 

 which is still the reward of those who labour 

 in Wilts, Hants, and Norfolk. We get a vivid 

 picture of bands of ragged and half-starved 

 peasants seeking work or maintenance as rounds- 

 men. We are reminded, too, of a forgotten page 

 of history, when in 1795 the labourers' wives 

 broke into open revolt, and, like the women of 

 France, commandeered the contents of mills 

 and butchers' shops, not stealing, but selling 

 food at fair prices, giving back to the owners the 

 sums realized. We see, too, how side by side with 

 rising prices, with the leap into grandeur of the 

 large farmers with their liveried servants, and 

 with the erection of the princely palaces of the 

 landowners enriched by Enclosure Acts and high 

 rents, quickly rose those Bastilles of the poor — 

 the workhouses — one or two of which were 

 levelled to the ground in 1830. Silhouetted 

 against the blazing ricks beside the figures of a 



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