Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/231

 CHAPTER V.

SECTION II.

AN ENGLISH VILLAGE IN 1844-5.

endeavour to give from my rough notes some idea of the condition of the peasantry of the district I had undertaken to visit for the purpose especially of ascertaining how much of the average earnings of a peasant's family go in purchasing clothing and articles paying excise or duty to government, as stated in the words of Mr. Cobden's letter to me, dated Manchester, November 5, 1844, and quoted in the ../Introduction/.

One day in the month of December, 1844, I walked along the road that ascends a somewhat steep hill separating two villages from one another in one of the south-western counties of England. The view from the summit of this hill (and there are several such views in that part of the country, which is a good deal wooded, and beautifully