Condition of the English Agricultural Labourer, 1871. 351 
tural labourers in that country during the last twenty years. 
The value of agricultural labour in the United States, and in 
our North American and Australian colonies, requires no com- 
ment ; and our object in alluding to the position of this class 
of labour in the great countries of Europe, is to indicate that 
even in the old world its value is appreciably and universally 
increasing. 
It seems unnecessary to go into further detail to show that 
in all parts of England there has been a general and sensible 
rise in the wages of the agricultural labourer, but we may briefly 
point out how much his wage varies in different localities, and 
how some other circumstances affect his position. The Com- 
missioners roughly estimate that weekly Avages range from 9s. 
or 10s. in the South and West of England up to 18s. in the 
Northern and Midland districts. In addition to this compara- 
tive cheapness of his work, the southern labourer has to contend 
against the disadvantage of high-priced fuel. The Durham or 
Derbyshire man has coal almost at his door, costing 6s. per ton 
at the pit-mouth, or 9s. to 10s. at the nearest railway station, 
"while the Berkshire man receives as part of his wages a ton of 
coals once a year, carried by his employer, and valued at 25s. 
per ton ; * while a friend of our own considers that his labourers, 
in a Surrey parish, buying their coals in small quantities, do 
not pay much less for them than 30s. per ton, delivered at their 
houses. 
In the Northern and Midland Counties, again, the labourer very 
often has the advantage of such an allotment of grass land as 
enables him to keep a cow, and to obtain milk for his children, 
besides realising some money by the labour of his wife and 
family on his own land, without their going out to work for hire ; 
and there is perhaps no method by which the landlord can more 
certainly add to the comfort of the married labourer than by letting 
to him grass for a cow. Almost equally good is the plan adopted 
by the farmer in Northumberland and parts of Scotland, of keeping 
a cow for each of his men. Mr. Culley quotes abundant evidence 
to show how well the system works in Derbyshire, and says : 
" I believe it would be impossible to overestimate the value of 
such a provision of milk as is within the reach of the families of 
most of the Derbyshire labourers. There are features, too, in the 
manner in which it is sometimes obtained, which tend to show 
how the condition of the labourer and his family may be improved 
without the danger of making him above doing his duty in that 
state of life to which it has pleased God to call him. . . . Many 
labourers in the north of Derbyshire rent, with their cottage s, six 
* Second Keport, 1869, p. 107. 
