Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/63

 with accommodation so niggardly allotted, that parents, sons and daughters, must eat, sit and sleep in one apartment! From Kent to Northumberland, these evils are complained of; and if hovels, which would be thought unfit housings for dogs and horses, are to be the reward of "industry embrowned with toil," we may cease to wonder if that industry should degenerate into careless and improvident habits, and that the workhouse, with its "regulation diets" and "ventilated halls," should be preferred to the cottage hearth, and the home of an honorable self-dependence.

The London Daily News of November 30th, 1846, contains an account of the Taunton Agricultural Society, from which I make the following extracts.

Sir Alexander Hood presided on this occasion, and among his supporters was Sir Thomas Lethbridge; whose speech on proposing the health of the chairman, was the leading feature of the festival. The latter part of this truly admirable speech I give at length, as it will show the reader that the subject of insufficient remuneration for labor, is beginning to occupy the attention of all classes.

The venerable baronet spoke at great length of the advantages of agriculture, and then drew the attention of his hearers to the farm laborer, as follows.

"There is one thing I wish to tell you. You have gone far enough in fattening stock. It strikes me that you are putting too much fat on lean bones. That does no good to anybody. We have shown what we can do, and you can do what you have done, over and over again. But it is not wise and profitable to do it. If it takes away an atom of food from the poor, stop it. Breed as much as