THE AFTERMATH OF THISTLES. 87 



master. In the course of a General Election Sir Walter 

 Barttelot was standing as a Tory of the old school for the 

 Horsham Division. A Liberal was opposing him. The school- 

 master asked a Petworth labourer for whom he had voted. 

 " Why, Barttelot ; he's the man for the likes of we. I knows 

 he." " But," said the schoolmaster, who was a Liberal, 

 " don't you know what party he belongs to ? " " Aye ; he's 

 for Gladstone, he be." And this happened as late as 1892. 



It was natural that in the clamour of political tongues 

 the secession of " Joey Chamberlain," who was their friend 

 in things that mattered to them, from Gladstone, who had 

 shown himself cold to Land Reform in England, the 

 agricultural labourer should feel himself betrayed and should 

 transfer his vote to the other party. Home Rule was to 

 the English agricultural labourer a political abstraction which 

 evoked no enthusiasm ; he wanted bread and he was told lie 

 should get justice for Ireland first. 



There was another writer who could get at the minds of 

 the agricultural labourers more easily than any parson. He 

 was not handicapped by the clerical uniform, and he could sit 

 in the kitchen of a country beerhouse, when he chose, as one 

 of themselves, and speak their own dialect. This was 

 Richard Jefferies, who made a tour of a dozen different coun- 

 ties with the express purpose of finding out the political mind 

 of the labourer. What seemed to impress him more than 

 anything else was that when the labourer was speaking with 

 perfect freedom he took a delight in looking forward to the 

 day when he would be able to plough the squire's " bloody 

 park," 1 which was certainly one manner of bringing grass 

 land back to cultivation ! 



In a sense the English labourer never has been political ; 

 that is as a House of Commons man understand politics, 

 But he is political in the sense of the Russian peasant, 

 though the Russian peasant may be more wedded to phrases 

 than the son of English soil. 



The parting of the ways came in iS,% when Hodge felt 

 that cottages and gardens were slipping away from his grasp 



1 The Rural Exodus, by P. Anderson Graham. 



