The Labour Bill in Farming. 
125 
included in the list — are far too slow in migrating, and arc still 
more loth to emigrate, even when there is a reasonable assurance 
of higher wages, cheaper food, and regular employment in a 
new sphere. We must remember, too, that the agricultural dis- 
tricts will bear a good deal of depletion, not only without injury 
to farmers and labourers, but with positive advantage to both. 
It is not really to the advantage of farmers in any district that 
there should be a redundant population ; for if the nominal rate 
^f w.ages be thereby kept somewhat lower than it is elsewhere, 
the rates are higher. Moreover, low wages generally mean de- 
pression and discontent among the labourers, and bad, nerve- 
less, dear work. 
The conditions of rural society are constantly at Avork to 
produce in every purely agricultural district this superfluity of 
blood and muscle. The land, as it is now cultivated, employs a 
stated number of men and youths. Taking fifty rural parishes 
in any county, you may predict with tolerable certainty, within 
fifty men, how many labourers will be wanting there at the end 
4)f the next ten years. The use of machinery must increase, and 
stand, to some extent, in the place of manual labour. Thus, 
while the demand for labour in the rural districts may be 
reckoned as pretty nearly fixed, supply is constantly outstrip- 
ping demand. Our peasantry do not abstain from marrying 
oarly and having large families because they know that emplov- 
inent cannot be found for all their children around the villages 
where they are born. They marry, often improvidently, though 
probably not more improvidently than artisans or labourers in 
towns. The result is that, as they must work to live, so they 
must migrate in order to work. For some years the discoverv 
of coprolites in East Anglia absorbed much of what would 
x)tlierwise have been surplus labour produced in excess of 
agricultural wants. But coprolite digging no longer affords a 
sufficient outlet for the annual increment of population in coun- 
ties which contain so few large towns and have so few manu- 
factures. 
All over rural England the same process of over-population 
goes on, and the same phenomenon is noted — that, though of all 
classes, perhaps without exception, agricultural labourers aie 
under the greatest necessity to leave their birth-places, and have 
the greatest inducement to do so, no class is so hard to move away. 
Our artisans are pretty nearly absorbed by the development of 
manufactures and the growth of great cities ; but they do not 
hesitate to go elsewhere if they see a chance of doing better for 
themselves. The sons of our trading and professional classes are 
ready at the shortest notice to move off to any part of the world, 
in order to find elbow-room and opportunities which do not 
