Tlie Lahoiir Bill in Famiiug. 
117 
raise your rent 35. a week too.'' John would hardly feel con- 
strained to say " Thank you " this time ; but if the cottage were 
worth Zs. a week more rent than John was paying for it, it is 
not clear that he could have urged any valid objection. As i 
have said elsewhere, to give with one hand and take away witt 
another leaves the wage-fund where it stood before ; but this re- 
adjustment of rental and earnings puts the relations between 
employers and employed on a much sounder footing, for wages 
then really mean wages, and rent means rent. At present both 
are arbitrary nominal terms which do not indicate what they 
i really represent. The wages are not represented by 13s. or 14s. 
in money, but by a mixed payment in coin and kind, not easily 
estimated ; varying as rents, cottage accommodation, and size of 
garden do vary even in the same parish and upon the same 
occupation ; and misleading not only outside critics, but the ver> 
parties to the contract, who only see dimly where they stand. 
Such a system must be full of anomalies, and also of injustice 
to individual labourers. The possession of a good cottage i-s 
often a matter of mere accident. The labourer to whom it is 
allotted receives an addition to his wages, as we have seen, 
though perhaps he works no harder or better than his fellows. 
Through accident, again, the cottages upon one estate or upon 
one farm will often be far better than those upon an adjoining 
estate or farm. The labourers in both cases will receive thft» 
same nominal wages, but those who occupy the good cottages 
are really in receipt of higher wages than their neighbours. 
These inequalities Avould disappear if you could reckon the 
average amount now received indirectly by labourers in the 
shape of under-rent : and if you paid this amount in money, 
requiring them, on the other hand, to give for their cottages a 
rent representing actual value. But it would be necessary, in 
strict justice, that this increase in money wages should be paid 
to all the labourers employed whose labour was of equal value. 
When the men were the tenants of their employer, they would 
be no better off through the change. Like the rector's gardener, 
they would receive Avith one hand and pay away with the other. 
But if men live in cottages which they do not rent from their 
employers, the same process will not necessarily be gono 
through. The addition to their wages, which equal justice 
requires, need not be paid away in extra rent, for it may be 
that they can get no cottage which is worth so much more 
money. 
6. Perquisites are probably given on much the same scale in the 
Eastern Counties as in other parts of Southern England. Beer 
is the chief, and certainly the most objectionable of these gifts 
