dressed over a thousand fellow-laborers under a great chestnut-tree at Wellesbourne. Meeting followed meeting in rapid succession. Arch was ubiquitous and untiring; and at last, at a memorable meeting at Leamington, the National Union was formed, with Joseph Arch as chairman, assisted by an executive committee of twelve laborers and an influential consultative council, comprising Professor Beesly, Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. J. C. Cox, Mr. Ashton Dilke, the Hon. Auberon Herbert, Mr. E. Jenkins, and others.
The moderation of the demands of the union was no less remarkable than the violence of the opposition offered by landlords, parsons, and farmers. Bishops menacingly alluded to "horseponds" as fitting receptacles for agitators. Then followed the memorable Chipping Norton prosecution and conviction of laborers' wives, and the important trial at Faringdon to test the right of public meeting, where Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and Mr. Jenkins held a brief for the union with such signal success. But it is not my business to write a history of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union. Suffice it to say that in most instances the immediate object of the union has been attained. Wherever the men have stood manfully by the union, wages have gone up, agricultural depression notwithstanding, from fifteen to twenty per cent. In South Warwickshire wages, which in 1872 stood at from $2.40 to $2.88, now range from $3.12 to $3.60 a week.
Within the executive of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union, harmony, I regret to say, has not uniformly prevailed. The urban unionists, who have exerted themselves, I believe, with perfect disinterestedness for the emancipation of the agricultural laborer,
