Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/293

 280 was necessarily called off very early from his studies, and never could read at all. He was the better workman, though the “scholard” of the family did not want wit. The fault lay in the quality of the school.

The younger boy had the advantage of his father’s talk and instruction as he helped him in hedge, ditch, or furrow; and this was better than doing nothing at school. As to the instruction, the boy grew up handy and diligent; and, though too fond of money, able and willing to soften his parents’ hard lot. As to the father’s talk—it was not what it had been. He was careworn: he was growing rheumatic, and lost sleep by the pain: he had no longer the flow of spirits of a hearty, well-fed, open-air labourer. His wife, too, was wearing down. Their minds grew contracted; and that feebleness of thought and feeling began to appear which is one consequence of overwork and underfeeding.

But how blessed was their state, even now, in comparison with that of many—even with most—of their neighbours! They themselves were neither unaware of this, nor unthankful for it, nor proud of their superiority. Every winter some cottage household was left desolate by the father or brother being carried off to jail for poaching, or carried to the grave, slain in the woods by keepers’ guns. All the year round there were wives and mothers hanging round the beer-shop or ale-house at midnight, trying in vain to get at the sots within to take them home. The doors were closed; and within were the victims, lying on or under the benches stupified by something else than beer. It would be a painful, but a useful thing to know how many rural labourers die in a year of the drugged beer so familiar to residents in some of our agricultural counties. In the morning the victims are stupid, headachy, sick, and powerless for work. Their limbs grow shaky, their tempers violent, and their ideas confused, till some attack of brain or stomach carries them off, or they sink into a state of weakness and folly, and they are reported dead of “fits,” or “cholera,” or “decline.” John and his sons have escaped these dangers by being honest and sober men. Yet there were persons—not the wisest and best certainly—but well-meaning neighbours, who asked, when seeing John’s funeral go by, how far he had been better off than his neighbours for his pride and honour, and his abstemious ways. He used himself to doubt whether either of his sons would ever be the stout man he once was: and neighbours then also asked one another how John was the better at sixty for having been such a stout fellow at twenty.

At sixty John was indeed sadly bent, and tremulous, and deaf. It was surprising that he could do such excellent work still with so feeble-looking a frame. He well earned his nine shillings a week, which was as much as any man of his class, except a few herdsmen and teamsters, was able to get. Some of the children had died young, two daughters (the third was the imbecile one) were supporting themselves, and the two sons were barely living on a precarious nine shillings a week in the same district. They were always welcome to a dinner at their father’s, when out of work, as long as there was anything to set on the table: but it became a question, at one time, whether there would still be enough for the three poor creatures at home.

The estates changed hands; and a young man succeeded to them who had more power over human welfare than is often consigned to a man of his years. His own wants, however, were paramount in his mind and heart,—the bottomless needs of a man of pleasure. So he wrote to his agent that it seemed to him that John and two others must now be above sixty years of age, and therefore somewhat past their work; and his positive orders were that their wages should be reduced to six shillings a week. It strikes one that the young man and the old must both have heard with very vivid feelings that passage read in church, from the Epistle of James, about the rich man and the hire of their labourers. It is true, John was so deaf that for a time there was no instruction for him at church,—unable either to hear or read: but somebody gave him an ear-trumpet; and he cried through the whole service the first time he used it. One would like to know that the young landlord cried through the whole service after hearing that passage in the Epistle of James.

Before long the young man died, as such unprofitable servants of society often do,—untimely in every way. The wages of the three old men were immediately raised to what they were before. But it was too late for John,—except as a pleasure. For a time he tried to work three days in a week; and there was nothing for it but accepting an allowance from the parish. Then it came to two days in a week; and then to half-days. His children did what they could; and the old couple never actually wanted food and clothes in their latter days. But their long toil and hardship and anxiety had caused them sore ailments of body and mind. Their minds were narrow and weak to a degree which made it incredible that they were the same couple that had begun life so cheerily. They had no new knowledge, no conversation, no interests beyond the care of getting bread. Both had miserable nerves, as under-fed and anxious people always have; and John’s deafness and his wife’s weakness shut them up within themselves. At last, old Susan was undeniably childish; and one day, John sank his head upon his breast, was carried to his bed, and died,—a martyr to rheumatism, as the common talk has it.

Such was the life of the best sort of agricultural labourer in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is so painful and humiliating that it might not be justifiable to exhibit it, if it were not for one of two objects,—either to record a past state of society, or to obtain a reform of an existing one. I have had both these objects in view. There is much reform needed, at this moment, in the treatment of agricultural labourers, before their lot can at all answer to the conception of it as one of the healthiest and happiest of vocations: and, on the other hand, we all believe it impossible that the condition of the labourer should ever retrogress to what it has been.

His vocation is now becoming one of skilled labour; and his qualifications and his wages must