166 REPORT—1868. 
fordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Shropshire, Surrey, Yorkshire, more than half being 
married men with families, at wages varying from 12s. a week, the lowest, with 
house and garden rent free, to 20s. a week, with house and garden rent free. In 
all cases the house and garden were rent free, and in some cases there has been 
fuel and potatoe ground, one or more, given in addition. The single men who 
amen been sent away are getting from 6s. to 8s. a week, with board, lodging, and. 
washing. 
From the above statement it is clear that the condition of the agricultural 
labourer is in different parts of the country very different. But notwithstanding 
statistics, which in this, as in the case of education, are very deceptive, and general 
statements made by persons of no experience, the fact that in agricultural districts 
the poor-rate is very high, that there are more marks than signatures in the 
marriage registers, that recruits from the same district are seldom able to read or 
write, that our prisons are filled from the same districts, and the general convic- 
tion that agricultural labourers are wholly unfit to be trusted with the franchise, 
are real and reliable evidences of the low condition of this class of men. That 
which is really required for the agricultural labourer is, in one word, independence ; 
at present he is the most dependent of any class of labourers. To effect this :— 
First, good wages in proportion to quantity and quality of work, but always, in the 
case of an able-bodied and industrious man, enough to keep him and his family, 
with a margin for insurance against old age and sickness, are required, Secondly, 
also well-drained and ventilated houses, with at least three bed-rooms, and all 
other appliances for decency, with a provision also against taking in lodgers, such 
houses to be in the control of the landowner rather than of the farmer. Thirdly. 
Greater facilities for education. Even a penny a week for each child in a large 
family is a heavy tax on a very small income. The temptations held out 
by the farmers of a few pence for boys to keep birds and do other child’s worl 
is too great for the poor labourer to resist. No child should be allowed to work 
till he can read and write well, and has a fair knowledge of the first rules of 
arithmetic, Fourthly. All mops and hiring fairs should be abolished, and a good 
system of registration be generally adopted and made known through the instru- 
mentality of the penny papers throughout the country. Fifthly. Agricultural 
Labourers’ Unions, of a strictly protective character, and well euarded against in- 
timidation to either employers or fellow workmen, might be formed with advantage, 
The whole system of unions is not to be condemned because of the outrages com- 
mitted by a few. All professions, all trades, even landowners and farmers, in 
their Chambers of Agriculture, have their unions. - Why are agricultural labourers 
alone to be left to struggle hopelessly, because singly, while all others are com- 
bined? Stzthly. There should be legislation in favour of the agricultural labourers, 
specially as regards education, and the administration of the Poor Law by a cen- 
tral board of disinterested officers instead of a local board of landowners and 
farmers. Legislation, so far, has done less for this than for any other class. 
Landowners and farmers have a special pecuniary interest in the improvement 
of the agricultural labourer. The clergy have a spiritual interest. All bread- 
winners ought to help him to raise himself to the same independence to which all 
except he has attained. All that can be done by an individual is to cooperate 
with any persons who are willing to take this good work in hand; or, failing the 
attempt thus to carry the work out on a large scale, one must content himself with 
carrying it on in a small way in his immediate neighbourhood. 
On the Drainage of the Fens of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, 
and Suffolk. By W.D. Harvine, O.E. (King’s Lynn). 
That part of the great level of the fens called the Bedford level, extending into 
the counties of Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Huntingdon, comprising about — 
300,000 acres, was first attempted to be drained in the early part of the seventeenth — 
century, and has been gradually improved from that period up to the present time. 
The early adventurers, aided by the Duke of Bedford, made upwards of 100 miles’ of 
new rivers, to convey the drainage waters to their outfall. 
__ In the early part of the eighteenth century the fen-men, in consequence of the 
