Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/235

 said that for ready money he could make a pair of labourer's shoes for nine shillings and sixpence, and get about two shillings and sixpence by the job. And even if in full work he could hardly make more than three pairs of such shoes in a week, which would bring him, if paid, but seven shillings and sixpence for his week's work. But he lost money, he said, by the agricultural labourers not paying him. They promised to pay at the rate of one shilling a week, but could not. He was often very ill off himself. He said "he was sure the Queen did not know how ill off the poor people were, or she would do something for them." Some had only one shilling a day or six shillings a week, some only five shillings a week. And the bread-tax was then upon them in all its oppressive force.

I will note here another recollection of that inquiry which had other difficulties besides the hostility of the farmers mentioned, I think, in the preceding section. I was walking along the road between Corfe Castle and Wareham, which last is separated from that part of Dorsetshire called the Isle of Purbeck by a small stream running into Poole Harbour, where, at a part of the road which lay between two high banks, I suddenly saw two