126 
Tlio Lahoiir Bill in Farmimj. 
exist in our own ovoiTrowdcd communities. Hitherto, however,, 
the Englisli peasantry, who are more valuable colonists, and more 
likely to succeed, than any other class, if they have average energy, 
thrift, and industry, are the very people who cling the closest 
to home, no matter how poor that home may be. 
It is impossible to believe that our farm-labourers will long- 
remain so reluctant to stir, and so little adventurous. No doubt 
one very strong motive-power with them, as with every other 
class, has been, and always will be, self-interest ; and the most 
obvious explanation of a man's reluctance to go somewhere else • 
is that he thinks he is better off where he is. In part this 
is a true explanation, though it does not account for the fact 
that farm-labourers are often content to stay in villages where 
their labour is not wanted. Education will make them more 
plastic, readier in adapting themselves to new conditions, and 
less disinclined to face what to them at present is the unknown. 
Union agents, emigration agents, and the Union press, are doing- 
their best to educate the men up to this point, and supply informa- 
tion as to the best labour-fields open to them in this country and 
the colonies. Such being the new influences brought to bear upon 
the agricultural labourer, not in one part of the country alone, 
but in all parts, to induce him to leave home, a question of the 
utmost interest arises, and one very pertinent to the present 
inquiry— Will the taste for emigration grow, and, after a time, 
sensibly affect the farm-labour market? Or will it do no more 
than restore a healthy balance between supply and demand, 
preventing stagnation at home, and furnishing the British colo- 
nies with a steady flow of the surplus labour which we cannot 
usefully employ ? I cannot help thinking that the influences 
just specified, though, perhaps, at first slow in their operation, 
will before long make themselves felt, and will gradually force 
upon the farmers a change in the system of hiring and oF 
work, if they wish their best men to stay at home. 
The rural Arcadia of which we can at present do little more 
than dream is one in which employers will find that the 
secret of economical farming consists in encouraging men to do 
their utmost and do their best, by paying them well for the 
results of work ; in which the young men will earn, by task- 
labour, wages enabling them to live comfortably, and pro- 
vide for old age out of savings ; in which education will make 
our peasants more intelligent workers, while it will be too widely 
spread to make them look down on work ; in which, also under 
the influence of education, the labourers as a class will become 
t(!mperate and frugal, acknowledging the duty of providence, 
insisting on decent, comfortal)le homes, and willing to pay fair 
rentals for such homes ; while they will learn self-respect, sterling- 
