This brings us to the remaining show of the autumn,—the Agricultural Meetings, held all over the country. They are as interesting now to the labourers as to the experimental or professional farmers. How proud the honest fellows are of the way in which steam-cultivators bring the soil into the condition of a seedbed, and of the clean and perfect way in which the mowing and reaping are done, even to the self-acting delivery, which their fathers would have cursed as an interference with their proper labour! How proudly each driver takes his seat on the machine, and guides it straight and without pause; and how proud and pleased are the boys who are trusted to fix the anchors, and attend to the machine, and finish its work in the rear. How they listen to the remarks of the judges, and use their minds in observing and comparing! How unlike they will be as men to the clodpoles their grandfathers!
At the banquet afterwards, how their position advances! In some aged labourers’ cottages we still see the wall ornamented with framed certificates, which tell of money prizes given for virtue; for having lived so many years under one master, and having brought up so many children without help from the rates. But givers and receivers are learning to be ashamed of such rewards. The labourers are under deep obligation to Mr. Walter for what he has done in ripening the higher spirit which is now leading employers and employed to see the distinction between prizes given for professional accomplishment and rewards conferred for moral conduct. We have had several excellent speeches from Mr. Walter on this topic; but this year’s, given at the meeting of the Wokingham Agricultural Association is so good, that he could hardly do better than repeat it every autumn, till there is not a landlord who would venture to offer gold to a fellow-citizen for being a good husband and father, or a sober and faithful servant, nor a labourer who would condescend to accept it. He points out the rational character of a prize given to the successful builder of a rick, or rearer of lambs, or driver of a straight furrow,—such acts being facts of which observers are the judges, and in which the candidates themselves strive for honour or reward: whereas, in the case of moral conduct, the good man is not a candidate for honour and reward, and the givers of the prizes are not qualified for just judgment. Whether a servant remains long in one service depends as much on the employer as the employed; and many a good labourer cannot stay in a place which a bad fellow would make a profit of. No one of us would accept a judgment on our conduct in life from any man simply because he is rich, or because we have made a contract with him for some mutual benefit. This seems now so plain that we turn away from the spectacle of a venerable fellow-citizen being called up to stand before the gentry, and be patronised for having done his duty before God in his own home. Whether he is proud or ashamed, we see that he is degraded, and we feel the insult for him. We deny the jurisdiction of his patrons, and should be pleased to see him take courage to throw down the money at their feet. This remnant of the old corruption of landlordism remains to be dealt with: we read, this very autumn, of a Herefordshire labourer (I will not repeat his name) who has been rewarded at the rate of sevenpence-halfpenny per annum for the years that he has kept his place on one farm; and of another, who received thirty shillings and some patronising praise from ratepayers for having reared nine children without help from the parish. We are getting on, however, and Mr. Walter commands more sympathy from high and low every year.
So much for the periodical occasions which exhibit the progress of the class of rural labourers. There are evidences and promises on a larger scale which confirm the truth.
From some of the agricultural counties there are exclamations of alarm about the stationary character, and even the decline of the population, which is made known by the recent census. There is no doubt of the fact: the question is whether it is an alarming one.
Several causes have wrought towards this result. Before the repeal of the Corn Laws it was made known by a comparison of statistical returns that the proportion of the agricultural population to others was incessantly diminishing. There was a time when two-thirds of the nation were employed in agriculture; whereas it had long ago diminished to one-fifth. We were publicly appealed to, I remember, a quarter of a century ago, to look round us, and see what became of the children of farmers and rural labourers: and we saw, sure enough, that a farmer with four sons and as many daughters brought up perhaps one son to the farm, and placed three in some shop, or manufacture, or profession; while his daughters married not only farmers, but tradesmen or townsmen of some sort. The labourers’ children have gone off into manufactories, or domestic service, or are journeyman artisans, or stand behind the counter. While they were so disposed of, the Nottingham lace-weavers, the Leicester stockingers, the Coventry and Lancashire operatives were bringing up all their children to their own trade. The evils of this latter plan are not my subject now. We are concerned here only with the fact that rural occupation was not hereditary, while other callings were. Yet we believed we had too many farm labourers, and the low wages seemed to show that it was so. Emigration was naturally resorted to; and we have seen what a point it has reached—the great mass of emigrants being from the rural districts. Since the opening of the trade in corn, and the agricultural improvement that has followed, the demand for rural labour has risen steadily, though not uniformly. We still want a system of agricultural statistics, and the repeal of the last remains of the law of settlement to admit of the natural distribution of labour, and the natural equalisation of its rewards: the wages are still eight shillings in one agricultural county and sixteen in another; but, on the whole, rural labour is much better paid, and the demand for labourers is on the increase, notwithstanding the growing use of labour-saving machinery. Thus, there is every reason to expect that the rural population will once more increase. It must do so whenever it answers better to the people to stay at home than to emigrate, and whenever it answers as well to work on the land