1921.] Agricultural Labour Early Last Century. 597 



ment to adopt this policy in 1831 after the riots of the winter 

 of 1830 and their terrible punishment. Up and down the country 

 there were individual landowners and individual parsons who 

 managed to introduce schemes of this kind into enclosure Bills 

 or into the administration of particular estates, generally with 

 most satisfactory results, but the general opinion in enlightened 

 circles was unfavourable. 



For the teaching of Malthus was in fashion and most people 

 argued that any reform of this kind would stimulate the increase 

 of population in which they saw at once the great mischief and 

 the great danger of their age. The drastic surgery of the Poor 

 Law of 1834, described by Thorold Eogers as " necessary, inop- 

 portune and unjust," represented the views of the majority of 

 the time ; the school known as the ' ' Vice and Misery ' ' school 

 because it held that it was only by these terrible agents that 

 Nature prevents man from increasing faster than his food. A 

 powerful attack was made on that creed by Michael Sadler, the 

 Tory Member for Newark, chiefly known as the leader of fac- 

 tory reform, in the House of Commons in 1831, in a speech 

 that contains a most interesting review of the agricultural con- 

 ditions of the time. 



A monumental volume has lately been published by a Cam- 

 bridge scholar describing the different types of agricultural 

 society that are to be found in the records of classical literature. 

 Mr. Ileitland traces in this book Agricola " the development 

 of Latin farming through its different phases. We see the small 

 farmer, the man who fought the early wars of the republic, 

 working with a small staff of domestic slaves. He gives way to 

 the great capitalist farmer who employs the slaves that were 

 swept into Italy from all the populations that were conquered 

 by Eoman arms. These unhappy exiles lived in " ergastula " 

 and we think of them chiefly in connection with the exploits of 

 Spartacus, the Thracian, who led his fellow slaves to a 

 short-lived victory over Eoman armies. Then there comes a 

 check to this process because the slave supply from this source 

 declines under the Empire and the work of cultivation is done 

 by Eoman coloni, tenant farmers. As their embarrassments and 

 difficulties grow, these men lose their status and sink to the 

 position of serfs. Thus in aU ages we are confronted with this 

 same problem, of finding under what type of human society 

 agriculture can best serve her two great purposes, as the source 

 of food and the mother of men. In that tormenting tragedy the 

 ■history of the English labourer in the years that followed th^ 

 great struggle with Napoleon makes a significant episode. 



