178 Slaney on Rural Expenditure. 



We shall arrange what we have to offer under three heads ; 

 first, a comparison of the condition and character of the 

 agricultural labours at present and in former times ; secondly, 

 a plain and simple enumeration and exposition of those 

 general principles on which all attempts to better their con- 

 dition and character must proceed, if we wish to produce a 

 permanent beneficial result, and to strike at the root of the 

 evil ; and lastly, a detail of some of the chief practical means 

 to accomplish these objects, founded on those principles. 

 Under this head, we shall confine ourselves chiefly to the 

 means of ameliorating their condition and character that 

 may be derived from the beneficial direction of the income, 

 and of the influence and example of the landed proprietors ; 

 thus bringing our efforts to bear on the same points which 

 Mr. Slaney in this work has in view. 



It is a lamentable and notorious fact, that the condition 

 and the character of the agricultural labourers of many of 

 the English counties, have sunk much below what they were 

 half a century ago. And it requires no process of reasoning 

 to prove that such cannot be the case without a grievous 

 diminution of their own happiness and usefulness, and of 

 the real best strength and stability of the country. Their 

 condition is worse : a far greater number at present than half 

 a century ago, are unable to procure constant and regular 

 work, and the wages of such as can procure it, though 

 nominally larger, are in reality much smaller. And if we 

 go still further back, we shall find that the agricultural 

 labourer, even at the distance of 300 or 400 years, at a time 

 when the land was covered with ignorance and barbarism, 

 had the command of more of the necessaries of life than they 

 have in the present day. 



But on such a subject it will be necessary as well as in- 

 structive to go into detail : general assertions go for little, 

 and are besides very suspicious, when they do not rest on 

 particular facts. Our positions are, that the agricultural 

 labourers of the present day, by the wages they receive, are 

 able to purchase fewer of the necessaries of life, than the 

 agricultural labourers formerly could purchase by their wages ; 

 that the present agricultural labourers obtain a less proportion 

 of what their labour produces than their ancestors did ; that 

 their condition compared with that of manufacturing labourers 

 is, at present, worse than it was formerly ; and lastly, that, 

 in the very midst of the wonderful and rapid improvement of 

 the country in which they dwell, and to which improvement 

 they have contributed their share ; in the midst of farmers 



