46 APPENDIX TO MR. OLIVER's ADDRESS. 



nothing to eat but dry bread. He got the flour — -fine, white 

 whealen flour — from the master. They kept a hog, and had 

 so much bacon as it would make, to provide them with meat 

 for the year. They also had a little potato patch, and he got 

 cheese sometimes from the master. He had tea, too, to his 

 supper. The parish gave him his rent and he never was called 

 upon for tithes, taxes, or any such thing. In addition to his 

 wages, the master gave him, as he did all the labourers, three 

 quarts either of cider or beer a-day, sometimes one and some- 

 times the other. He liked cider best — thought there was 

 " more strength in it." Harvest time they got six quarts, and 

 sometimes, Avhen the work was very hard, he had had ten 

 quarts 



" He had heard of America and Australia as countries that 

 poor folks went to ; — he did not well know why, but supposed 

 wages were higher, and they could live cheaper. His master 

 and other gentlemen had told him about those places, and the 

 laboring people talked about them among themselves. They 

 had talked to him about going there. (America and Australia 

 were all one — two names for the same place, for all that he 

 knew.) He thought his master or the parish would provide 

 him with the means of going, if he wanted them to. We 

 advised him to emigrate then, by all means, not so much for 

 himself as for his children, — the idea of his bringing seven, or 

 it might yet be a dozen, more beings into the world to live 

 such dumb-beast lives, was horrible to us. I told him that in 

 America his children could go to school, and learn to read and 

 write and to enjoy the revelation of God ; and as they grew 

 up they would improve their position, and might be land- 

 owners and farmers themselves, as well off as his master ; and 

 he would have nothing to pay, or at most but a trifle that he 

 could gratefully spare, to have them as well educated as the 

 master's son was being here ; that where I came from, the far- 

 mers would be glad to give a man like him, who could 

 " plough and sow and reap and mow as well as any other in 

 the parish," eighteen shillings a-week — 



" And how much beer ? " 



"None at all!" 



"None at all? ha, ha! he^d not go then — you'd not catch 

 him workin withouten his drink. No, no ! a man 'ould die off 

 soon that gait." 



It was in vain that we ofiered fresh meat as an offset to the 

 beer. There was " strength," he admitted, in beef, but it 

 was wholly incredible that a man could ivorl: on it. A work- 

 ingman must have zider or beer, — there was no use to argue 



I 



