344 Condition of the English Agricultaral Labourer, 1871. 
that is taking- place beyond his own village, dissatisfied with his 
position and yet without energy or effort to improve it, oppressed 
by his employer, and neglected by his landlord. Even supposing 
these charges to have a portion of truth in them as regards the 
labourer in some of the southern and western counties of Eng- 
land, where agriculture is almost the only source of employment 
open to him and his family, and where the influence of railway 
communication has not been sensibly felt, it certainly is not 
true of this class in the greater portion of the United Kingdom. 
And we are enabled, from the inquiries that have recently been 
made under the authority of Parliament, to form a very fair 
opinion of the present position of the agricultural labourer in 
England, and to contrast it, not only with that of other classes 
dependent upon manual industry for their support, in this and 
other countries, but with his own posititfn twenty or twenty-five 
years ago. 
Perhaps nothing has done more for the agiicultural labourer 
than tbe opening out of the country by railway enterprise, and 
the facilities thereby afforded for the movement of superfluous 
labour from one district to another. In 1846, when Mr. Nicholls 
wrote his essay, there were but 3036 miles of railway open in 
the United Kingdom, carrying about 48,000,000 passengers per 
annum. In 1869, the number of miles open was 15,145, and 
the passengers carried in that year were 305,068,071, exclusive 
of season ticket-holders. The application of machinery to all 
purposes of agriculture during this period increased to an 
immense extent. In the prize-list of the Royal Agricultural 
Society for 1847, a single prize of 20Z. was offered for the best 
threshing-machine applicable to horse or steam power; and this 
appears to be the only allusion to steam-power in the prize-list 
for the year. Of late years so numerous have been entries of 
different classes of steam-engines to provide motive power for 
dressing corn for market and for preparing food for stock, that 
it has been found necessary to try the fixed engines only in 
one year, and to postpone the trials of the important class of 
portable engines to another season. The scythe and the reaping- 
liook are fast passing out of fashion ; the heavy work of the 
mower and the severe strain upon the reaper have been almost 
entirely removed by machinery ; while steam, i,iot satisfied with 
its mastery of the indoor work of the farm, has already been 
used in twenty-seven counties of Great Britain to prepare the 
soil itself for the future crop.* 
With this rapid advance of mechanical discovery in aid of the 
labour of the farm, the men who have to work and to guide 
* Agricultural Returns, 1870, page 16. 
