206 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
while the then customary and legal relationship subsisting between land- 
lord and tenant would scarcely be credited by the present-day representa- 
tives of either body. Listen to ‘ The Thunderer’s ’ views upon the first 
stirring of agrarian Trades Unionism. ‘ The public, we believe, are not 
aware of one subject with which the Cabinet has been occupied at its 
recent meetings ; and when they come to hear it, those who watch 
political symptoms will confess that one of a more truly portentous 
character has seldom offered itself to the attention of this or any other 
Government : we mean the spirit which has for some time directed the com- 
binations of the working classes against their employers. If this spirit 
proceeds as it threatens, we give it as our well-weighed opinion, that 
neither lawful authority nor private property (as for commerce and manu- 
factures, they are out of the question) will be worth as much as five years’ 
purchase from the date at which we are writing ’ (September 30, 1825). 
Here we do indeed find an altered outlook, for the Agricultural Wages 
Boards, the logical corollary of Trades Unionism, have eventually been 
supported by all political parties. 
Can I better illustrate the changes wrought by the passage of those 
five-score years than by enumerating some of those infractions of the law 
for which participants in agriculture could then and can now suffer fine 
or imprisonment ? Then, these penalties faced the worker who, with two 
or three of his fellows, ‘ combined ’ for the purpose of seeking an increase 
in his rate of remuneration ; now, punishment awaits the employer who 
fails to pay an independently determined minimum wage. Then, retailers 
who sold bread above the standard price fell foul of the law; now, pro- 
ducers vending commodities (e.g. milk) below a stated price suffer col- 
lectively administered financial retribution, as also do those who dare to 
raise more than an arbitrary acreage of certain crops (e.g. potatoes), whilst 
only a predetermined minority has effective access to some others (viz. 
hops). ‘Take other fields for comparison. Then, forestalling and regrat- 
ing, although absolved from any legal stigma, were still looked upon 
askance as potential dangers to trade ; now, their practice forms, in effect, 
the recognised livelihood of large sections of the community. Then, 
landlords were omnipotent ; now, fortified by Agricultural Holdings Acts 
innumerable, the tenant can virtually dictate his terms to a subservient 
owner. In the 1820’s and the 1830’s the tenant-farmer, as well as the 
landowner, staggered under the weight of National taxation, while together 
they had also to meet special duties upon a multiplicity of capital and 
productive goods—e.g. cart- and saddle-horses, gigs and traps, the malt 
they produced—and they had also to contribute, without any special 
concessions, to the unmodified demands of the rate-collector at a time 
when, even in rural areas, local taxation could exceed 20s. or 30s. in the 
pound, and they were, literally, tithed in kind. Now, as I shall hope to 
demonstrate later, the emasculated charges that remain can be laughed at 
by those men’s great-grandsons. ‘To illustrate, however, in passing, to 
what a small extent the vast remission of taxation is appreciated by these 
interests, I recall how, a few years ago, a meeting of East Anglian farmers 
passed with acclamation a resolution protesting against the weight of 
taxation that then crushed their industry. Their surprise was great when 
