242 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



and deplorable in the extreme. Those who have means 

 to enable them to indulge, if only to a very moderate 

 extent, in the recreations of life, cannot easily realise 

 the state of a man who has absolutely nothing but what 

 is necessary to keep him alive, and that notwithstanding 

 the most incessant toil. :< The labourer is worthy of 

 his hire " is a scriptural doctrine ; and that hire ought 

 to be sufficient to enable him to have some margin, 

 however small. It seems especially hard that this 

 should not have been so in the case of those very toilers 

 who produce what is most essentially required by the 

 community their food ; and that to enable the con- 

 sumers of this produce to obtain it at such a price that 

 the most moderately-circumstanced amongst the better 

 classes shall have an ample supply, the tiller of the soil 

 should practically be in a starving condition ! 



It must be obvious that the system of keeping the 

 farm labourer in this condition is the worst possible 

 public policy. The enfeebled frame engendered by 

 insufficient food is not nearly so well able to produce 

 the best results as a well-fed race of men could ; so 

 that the starving policy does not " pay." 



Of course, under such a policy the workman is not 

 and cannot be independent of extraneous aid a con- 

 dition of things which largely tends to reduce his own 

 self-respect, and which prevents him from becoming, 

 humble though his position be, a free citizen. In a 

 previous chapter relating to the noble and public- 

 spirited labours of Canon Girdlestone it will naturally 

 be noted by the observant reader that the farm labourers 

 dared not attend a vestry or other public meeting in 

 which their masters held all the power. They were far 

 too dependent, in every way, upon their employers to 

 venture upon the slightest opposition. Even the magis- 

 trates sided against them on very many occasions when 

 they had to appeal to the law in cases of particular in- 

 justice. One such case occurred upon the very day of 



