STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAND 35 



the Times (Dec. 6th, 1830) as " industrious, 

 kind-hearted, but broken-hearted beings, 

 exasperated into madness by insufficient food 

 and clothing," were treated with a harshness 

 which eighty-three years afterwards is scarcely 

 conceivable. No life had been taken during 

 the " Swing Riots " : nevertheless, nine men 

 and boys were hung, at least 450 men and boys 

 were transported, and 400 suffered imprison- 

 ment in the local gaols. Here and there in 

 Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, and Berkshire I have 

 come across very old men and women who 

 still remembered the frenzy of horror and grief 

 produced in the villages by these appalling 

 penalties, for of those transported to Aus- 

 tralia and Van Dieman's land, only about one 

 in six returned. 



The extension of the franchise in 1867 en- 

 couraged the labourers to make another effort 

 in the days of Joseph Arch and the Union. 

 Some advance in their miserable condition 

 was, it is true, secured, but the same lack of 

 cohesion and independence and sustained 

 effort the outcome of the long centuries of 

 oppression and neglect again prevented the 

 men from reaping the proper fruit of their just 

 discontent. By the end of the nineteenth 

 century the labourer had generally relapsed 

 into apathy and hopelessness. Deprived of 



