Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/219

 CHAPTER V.

SECTION I.

PEASANT LIFE.

peasant life may be more picturesque than the artisan life; but the artisan is less helpless against oppression than the peasant. Lord Macaulay relates how, in consequence of the state of the currency in 1695—

"'The labourer found that the bit of metal, which, when he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he wanted to purchase a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence. Where artisans of more than usual intelligence were collected in great numbers, as in the dock-yard at Chatham, they were able to make their complaints heard and to obtain some redress. But the ignorant and helpless peasant was cruelly ground between one class which would give money only by tale, and another which would take it only by weight.'"

And the peasant's wretched condition had lasted