The EiJiancipation of Labour. 507 



peasant's mind a strong sense that he had been robbed 

 of an ancient right. To this day he believes that his claims 

 on outdoor relief are senior to all statutory enactments, and 

 that modified form of it which still exists is probably destined 

 to assume an increased importance as soon as the institution 

 of Parish Councils shall have given his class a voice in the 

 matter. 



But it was not only in these particular directions that the 

 new law seriously affected the interests of the landowner and 

 land-holder. We cannot wonder that King William's advisers 

 adopted strong measures when grappling with the question of 

 Poor Law E-eform ; but we are surprised to find what little 

 opposition their proposals created in the Tory camp, and can 

 only conclude that the Landed Interest was blind to the 

 favourable influence which such a step would exercise on the 

 other great question pending, viz., the repeal of the Corn 

 Laws. The agitation of the Manchester school, the Anti-Corn- 

 Law riots, and the Peterloo massacre, were a chain of alarming 

 occurrences which warned the oligarchy that deeper mischief 

 was brewing. The starving labourer, it might have been 

 thought, would have resembled wax under the hands of those 

 agitators whose object it was to mould him into a weapon of 

 offence against the landed class. 



But the effects of Pitt's Act on the rustic mind were 

 decidedly soporific, and the parson was able to counteract 

 from the Sunday pulpit all the mischief created in his parish 

 during the week by the teaching of Manchester demagogues. 

 A few more decades under a Poor-Law system which tended 

 to obliterate all his sense of independence and responsibility 

 might have rendered the peasant perfectly useless for the pur- 

 poses of the agitator. Perhaps nothing short of the exag- 

 gerated rhetoric indulged in by mob orators after the affair of 

 1820 in St. Peter's Fields would have sufficiently aroused him 

 out of that apathy into which Pitt's Act had plunged him. 

 To the minds therefore of the Radical party one further 

 inducement for abolishing the practice must have been its 

 counteracting effect on their teaching. All these subtle 

 influences of legislative practices on character were probably 



