534 Experiment in Monmouthshire 



pily admits of being enforced, has driven away a few adven- 

 turers, and alarmed, disgusted, and in some degree para- 

 lysed all ; so that the prospect of rescuing many more from 

 the jaws of poverty, and from the fangs of oppression and 

 want, is not at present very encouraging, although the num- 

 ber of inhabitants in the three villages mentioned in my last 

 has, since the date of that account, increased to between two 

 and three thousand. At present, from the conjoint operation 

 of local taxation, and the necessary effects of the present 

 depressed state of every branch of British industry, the popu- 

 lation in these experimental villages is on the decrease rather 

 than otherwise. How much this is to be regretted by every 

 real friend of his country, the following short statements, show- 

 ing in part, but materially, the altered condition and conse- 

 quent feelings of the poor, will unanswerably testify. Early 

 in the year 1827, an unfortunate difference respecting wages 

 took place between the proprietors of the Monmouthshire 

 collieries and their workmen ; and a comparatively few vaga- 

 bonds became the terror of the country for several weeks, by 

 means of nightly alarms, and depredations committed on such 

 of their fellow-workmen as were willing to work on their 

 masters' terms. Then it was that the difference was con- 

 spicuously shown between those who had nothing they could 

 call their own, and those who were conscious that, in their 

 houses and gardens more particularly, they had something 

 to lose ; between those who had been made half brutes by 

 having been subjected to contumely, contempt, and inhu- 

 manity, and those who had been treated with the consider- 

 ation and kindness due from all human creatures one to the 

 other. Whilst the unmarried colliers rambled into other 

 mining districts in search of work ; and whilst the great mass 

 of the married men scoured the country for fifteen miles 

 round in parties of from ten to twenty in each, with wallets 

 over their shoulders, and bludgeons in their hands, levying 

 contributions in victuals and clothes for the support of their 

 families, the Blackwood villagers, who had gardens, turned 

 their attention to them, and subsisted themselves out of them 

 and of the resources at their command : and when it became 

 necessar}^ to swear in a considerable number of special con- 

 stables to aid in preserving the peace of the country, and for 

 the protection of property, none were found more ready, 

 none more zealous, none more faithful, none more effective, 

 than the cottage freeholders of Blackwood. * Again, in the 



* In December, 1828, sixty of these villagers formed themselves into 

 The Blackwood Society for Free Enquiry. In the address delivered at the 



