288 THE BOOK OF THE LANDED ESTATE. 



schools, and in this respect they have a great advantage over the English 

 labouring classes. In England a large proportion of farm and general 

 country labourers can neither read nor write, and, generally speaking, I 

 have found these inferior as workmen ; while in Scotland there are com- 

 paratively few who cannot both read and write, and who do not under- 

 stand the first rules of arithmetic, and in consequence of this the Scotch 

 are generally more intelligent, and therefore superior as farm-workmen. 

 Seeing, then, that education is necessary to make a superior plough- 

 man, as well as it is to make a superior workman in any other depart- 

 ment of business, both landed proprietors and tenant-farmers should 

 make it a point to secure the highest education possible for this class, 

 on whose labours and skill they depend so much for the profitable 

 working of their estates and farms. It need not be feared that, if better 

 educated, they would be less obedient to their employers. This is not at 

 all consistent with our experience in dealing with human nature ; for 

 we invariably find that the more any class of men are educated, the 

 more useful they become in their sphere of life, inasmuch as they are 

 thereby made more reasonable and intelligent, and therefore better able 

 to understand how all matters in connection with the business they are 

 employed in should be conducted, both for their own advantage and 

 for that of their employers. In order that farm-labourers may become 

 better educated, so as to fit them for properly acting their part, as 

 agriculture becomes more and more refined and complex in its details 

 which it certainly must do as improvements are effected in it landed 

 proprietors should see that the children of every man employed on their 

 estates are so trained and taught as to fit them for being more intelligent 

 than their parents, and therefore more profitable servants, and better 

 members of society. Were proprietors to see to this, and were farmers 

 to be more particular than they are in respect to giving higher wages to 

 educated and skilful men than to uneducated and comparatively unskil- 

 ful ones, there would ere long be found a greater desire for education 

 among labourers themselves than there is at present, as they would 

 see that there was something substantial to be gained by education and 

 intelligence. 



I could point out many praiseworthy examples of landed proprietors 

 who have recently established reading-rooms on their own home-farms 

 for the improvement of the workmen employed in their establishments, 

 but I merely refer to the fact to show what is being done in some quar- 

 ters for the improvement of the labouring classes in the country. I ought 

 to note in regard to this, however, that in these reading-rooms news- 

 papers are supplied regularly, and also various periodicals and books on 

 the subjects of agriculture, gardening, geology, botany, geography, &c., all 



