felon paces backwards and forwards to the scene of his toil. But the felon knows no anxiety, his bread and his water are sure; little recks he of rent-day, or the score at the tally-shop, or of the doctor's bill. Should he fall ill, he knows it will be a passport to the hospital, a time of repose, with extra rations of meat, and possibly wine. Not so with the labourer; far from extra food being his lot, should he or his wife be laid aside, the whole household is impoverished, and have to do with less even of the necessaries of life. So, again, in old age, if he will not resign his liberty, he must be content with just enough to keep body and soul together, to sit panting with asthma in a little draughty hovel, longing for death to release him, and saying bitterly with the patriarch, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage."
Christianity teaches contentment founded on trust in God, but nowhere contentment founded on the love of ease and the fear of man. But it teaches everywhere to its followers a burning indignation against all wrong and injustice.
This "capacity for indignation," as Mr Kingsley has lately reminded us, is the root of all virtue. Therefore I believe the Christianity of the leaders of the Warwickshire Labourers' Union to be of a far nobler type than that of this good old labourer.
How much the world gains when its inevitable changes are brought about by men who believe in their responsibility to God, may be seen in the unusual moderation and good sense which has marked this movement. And surely its wonderful success may be accepted as a proof that it was the right act at the right time, and therefore of its being strictly within the divine order of things. When 1872 opened, the men of South Warwickshire had scarcely dreamt of agitating. When in February they first sent in their demands, we have seen how little the masters comprehended the situation; so that they quite ignored the notice, believing it was got up by a few discontented spirits, and that the great mass of the labourers would sink again into their old subserviency directly these persons had withdrawn.
But they soon found out their mistake. Village after village took up the cry. Along the dark lanes came the men tramping through the slush, in spite of rain, and darkness, and still darker
