232 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



from the wages of his son, who worked for the same farmer t 

 In another case, a carter in the employ of a Halberton 

 farmer was sent by his master on a long journey to a distant 

 place. The journey took him twenty hours. The master, 

 a man of substance, refused to give him anything for his 

 additional work beyond a bit of bread and beef and four- 

 pence ! To record, unimpassioned, such instances as these 

 is a somewhat difficult task. But we simply record them, 

 leaving the facts, uncoloured as they were related to us by 

 Canon Girdlestone, to speak for themselves merely adding 

 that, whilst too many similar cases might be given, there are, 

 on the other hand, we believe, not a few farmers whose blood 

 would tingle with indignation on learning the circumstances 

 we have detailed. Such as we have described them were, 

 with few exceptions, the condition of life and the treatment 

 experienced (when Canon Girdlestone came amongst them) 

 by the peasantry of North Devon, whose cottages hovels 

 of only two rooms, with consequently insufficient provision 

 for the decent accommodation of families were not fit, 

 many of them, to house cattle in ; and whose earnings were 

 not enough to keep body and soul together. And although 

 the district was a rich and important one, it was populated 

 by a peasantry enfeebled in body and depressed by their 

 deplorable circumstances. The question at once arose in 

 Canon Girdlestone's mind, what was to be done ? He could 

 not permit the state of things which he found existing to go on 

 without making some effort to put a stop to it. He did nothing 

 hastily. He had over and over again visited the houses of 

 the labourers ; he had made minute and searching inquiries 

 into all their circumstances and surroundings. He could find 

 nothing to palliate the wrong which was inflicted upon them 

 by the system under which they worked ; and, as a Christian 

 minister, he could not remain unmoved at what he saw and 

 heard. He first tried the effect of private remonstrance ; 

 but that proved unavailing. Then he determined on the 

 bolder course of addressing the farmers from the pulpit and 

 reproving them, in his capacity as a pastor and a teacher, for 

 the manner in which they treated their human labourers, to 

 whom, he said, they had been accustomed to give less con- 

 sideration than they gave to their cattle. The sermon in 

 which he made this home- thrust raised a terrible storm in 

 the parish. The farmers were highly indignant at the con- 

 duct of the vicar, and from that moment made open war 

 upon him, adopting, amongst other methods of attack, that 

 of writing, in reference to what he had done, offensive letters 

 which were published anonymously in a local newspaper. 

 About the same time the annual tithe dinner took place, and 

 it was pre-arranged that when the vicar's health was pro- 

 posed, the glasses, instead of being filled, should be reversed 

 empty. The canon, however, having learnt this intention 

 beforehand, left the room where the dinner was being held 

 before the time arrived for proposing his health. As it became 



