NEWS FROM THE FARM.[5]
“The Ayrshire Ploughman,” glorious Burns, tells us that the muse of his country found him, as Elijah did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over him. Grateful Caledonia sent her inspired child to an excise office! and in the discriminating patronage the wits of Grub Street found material for interminable sneers. Did the Southerns, however, reward the author of the “Farmer’s Boy,” and indicate their appreciation of the many fine passages that grace his “News from the Farm,” by a wiser or more generous patronage? The minister of the day (Lord Sidmouth, if we remember rightly) did bestow upon the poet some most paltry and ungenial office; but alas! poor Bloomfield died neglected in the straits of penury, and under the clouds of dejection. It had been better indeed, in every way, could it have been so arranged that the marvellous Robin should have been allowed to sing his lyrics
——“in glory and in joy,Following his plough upon the mountain side,”
——“in glory and in joy,Following his plough upon the mountain side,”
——“in glory and in joy,Following his plough upon the mountain side,”
——“in glory and in joy,
Following his plough upon the mountain side,”
and that Bloomfield had been permitted to indite more “News from the Farm” amid the pleasant rural scenes that nursed his pastoral muse. But the patronage of genius has never been successful. Unusual peril seems the heritage of high gifts, and to minister rightly to such a man as Burns or Bloomfield is no easy task. It is not so with ordinary men, whose intellectual and imaginative powers harmonise with the common duties of their station, and raise no splendid incongruities to be subdued and regulated. But it is not with inspired ploughmen that our country gentlemen and tenant-farmers are called upon to deal, but with men of common clay—with the brawny peasants who till their fields and tend their herds, and whose toil has turned the sterile North into a garden of Ceres. Have our agricultural labourers been neglected—have their physical wellbeing and their moral and educational training been overlooked and left uncared for, while the classes above them and around them have had their comforts and privileges, moral and social, infinitely multiplied? This were indeed sad “news from the farm;” but although this were unhappily proved to be true, we are not then prepared to pronounce sweeping censure upon the parties apparently most nearly implicated in the degradation of our rural population. Many, very many, of the owners and occupants of the soil, we know, are deeply alive to the duties which they owe to the labouring poor who live under them, and discharge them to the best of their ability, although not, it may be, to the extent their benevolent wishes would desire. The question that may be raised on such a subject is not, Have our rural labourers been left stationary while the classes above them have all been elevated in their social condition? but rather, Are they worse off, and do they enjoy fewer advantages, than those in the same class of life—the industrious poor who inhabit our large cities and manufacturing towns and villages? Is the ploughman in his bothy unfurnished with table or chair, and the peasant in his “clay-built biggin,” damp and smoky though it be, more miserably accommodated with the comforts and conveniences of life than the haggard sons of toil, who are doomed to burrow in the murky lanes and blind alleys of our teeming seats of merchandise? Does the brawny arm and ruddy complexion of the ploughman bespeak deficient food or raiment, and manifest such dubious symptoms of health as the pinched countenance and pallid complexion of the attenuated artisans who live in “populous city pent?” Yes, responds promptly the inhabitant of the city; but that robust health is not due to the miserable bothy and the mud cabin, but to the pure air of the country, and the breezy gales of incense-breathing morn, and the healthful toil of the open field, which are the unchartered boons of a gracious Heaven, and in no respect the gifts of the lords of the soil. In the rejoinder of Mr Urbanus there is no doubt substantial truth; but that very rejoinder, perhaps, contains an explanation of the neglect pointed at. The robust health of the peasant has not admonished the country gentleman of duty neglected, and no emaciated frame and loopholed raggedness have appealed to his sympathies and rebuked his indifference. The opulent inhabitants of our cities have been addressed in a different strain, and the deadly typhus and the inscrutable plague of Asia have been the stern preachers to which they have been doomed to listen. If they have led the van in reformatory and sanitary measures for improving the social condition of the industrious poor, it is not very evident that their philanthropy has been quite spontaneous, or that it has been altogether uninfluenced by considerations suggested by a regard to their own personal safety and selfish interest. Those who may be disposed to range the country against the town, or curious to strike the balance of merit in the field of philanthropic enterprise betwixt our merchant princes and our country gentlemen, may prosecute such inquiries as have been indicated if they please; but for ourselves, we have no taste for such unprofitable investigation, and would rather lend a helping hand to a most interesting movement that has been lately originated towards improving the social condition of our agricultural labourers—a most loyal and peaceful race, forming, upon the whole, the best-conditioned part of the industrious classes of the kingdom.
Thanks to the Rev. Harry Stuart, of Oathlaw, if not for having originated the movement, for having at least given it a most unquestionable impetus, and for indicating the direction which it ought to take. We have read hisAgricultural Labourers, &c., with remarkable interest and pleasure—a pleasure very different, and we believe much higher, than the most elaborate writing of the most brilliant pamphleteer could have given us. Mr Stuart, indeed, has nothing of thelittérateurabout him, and his style is the very reverse of artistic. He tells us that his appeal has been “got up in great haste,” but we scarcely think it could have been better had more time been devoted to its composition. It had been no improvement, in our estimation, had his Essay been tricked out in rhetorical embroidery, and been embellished with well-poised and finely-polished periods. We are quite sick of the flash and sparkle of the journalists, of their stilted eloquence and startling antithesis. The editor of every country newspaper writes nowadays as grandly as Macaulay, and apes to the very life “the long-resounding march and energy divine” of Burke and Bolingbroke. It is really a relief in these times to be spoken to in plain, natural, homespun English. When an honest gentleman has anything of importance to communicate, for ourselves we are very well pleased that he should use the vernacular, and address us in simple Anglo-Saxon. This is exactly what Mr Stuart has done. He writes from a full heart, and is manifestly so possessed with his theme that he has had no time to think of the belles-lettres and the art rhetorical. The minister of Oathlaw is peradventure no popular orator, and has never probably paraded himself on the platform, and his name is in all likelihood unknown to the sermon-fanciers of Edinburgh, but nevertheless he is quite a pastor to our taste. Living without pride amongst his people, going from house to house, knowing well the trials of every household, a patient listener to the homely annals of the poor, catechising the young, exhorting the unruly, helping the aged to trim their lamps and gird up their loins, we can understand how well and how quietly this worthy clergyman discharges the duties of the pastorate, reaping a nobler guerdon in the love of those amongst whom he lives and labours than ever the noisy trump of fame blew into ambition’s greedy ear. We rejoice to think that there are many such pastors in our country parishes, who, with their families, constitute sympathetic links of kindly communication betwixt the rich and the poor, and from whom, as from centres of civilisation, are shed on all around the gentle lights of literary refinement and Christian charity. These are the men who form the strength of our Established Church, and not her doctors and dignitaries; and, indeed, over our retired rural parishes it is evident that nothing but an endowed resident parochial clergy can permanently exert the beneficent influence of the pastoral office.
The origin of Mr Stuart’s address he states as follows: He became a member of the Forfarshire Agricultural Association upon the understanding, that the improvement of the social condition of the agricultural labourers was to be one of the objects to which the Association should direct its attention. Such seems to have been the intention of the society, or at least its committee were so ready to welcome the idea, that they forthwith asked Mr Stuart to address them upon the subject, and he did so accordingly. His auditors were so pleased, and, it may be, so instructed, that they requested the author to publish his address; and under the auspices of the Forfarshire Association it has been given to the world.
We have often thought that each of our counties has a distinct character of its own, and is distinguished by features peculiar to itself. While the Forfarshire coast has its populous towns, the seats of mercantile enterprise, and of thriving manufactures, the county has likewise been long eminent for its agriculture. By the symmetry and beauty of his Angusshire “doddies,” Hugh Watson of Keillor has made the county famous for its cattle. In Forfarshire, Henry Stephens practised the art which he has so admirably illustrated in his book. The son of a small farmer in this county, while a student at college, invented and elaborated, without aid or patronage, in a rude workshop, that reaper which American ambition has now so covered with fame. Forfarshire gentlemen, although non-resident, are not disposed to forget the claims of their native county, and by means of “the Angusshire Society” they annually distribute among its schools numerous prizes, thus countenancing the cause of education throughout the county, stimulating its ingenious youth to exertion, and animating its teachers in their honourable toil. And now the Forfarshire Agricultural Society, under the mild appeals of the Pastor of Oathlaw, have led the way in organising an association for raising the social condition of the agricultural labourers of the kingdom. So all hail to old Angus!—and may her proprietors, pastors, and tenant-farmers long be eminent in their spheres of duty, and cordially unite in the field of benevolent enterprise.
Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has been extensively read by landed proprietors and the better classes of our farmers. We wish it were universally so by these parties; and we wish, too, it were read and inwardly digested by the factors and agents to whom our large proprietors have committed the conduct of their business, and the care of their properties, and the welfare of those who cultivate them. It is impossible to read the speeches of the most interesting meeting held here on the 10th January last, and presided over by his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, without feeling that Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has literally proved “news from the farm” to very many of the owners and occupiers of the soil—the very parties who ought to know best the habits and discomforts of our agricultural labourers. It is very remarkable, indeed, that the Duke of Buccleuch seems accurately informed upon the subject; that he has personally inspected the dwellings of the agricultural labourers on his estate; and that he has personally issued instructions regarding the improvement of their cottages. Considering the territorial extent of his Grace’s estates, and the varied and momentous interests that claim and receive his Grace’s attention, his conduct and example, as well as his benevolent and patriotic words, will carry a severer reproof to those landowners who shall hereafter continue indifferent to the comfort and welfare of the labourers, than the most biting speech of the most pungent pamphleteer. Why, it may be asked, has Mr Stuart been left to make such a discovery? Why did the tenant-farmers, who are daily witnessing with their own eyes the discomforts of the agricultural labourers, who are most deeply interested in their physical and moral condition, and to whom Providence has more immediately committed the care of their interests—why did they not complain, and call for some amelioration of an evil so discreditable? But the fact is, that such men as Messrs Watson, Finnie, Cowie, and many others we might name, have never ceased to avail themselves of every opportunity of directing attention to the condition of our agricultural labourers, but they have heretofore, for the most part, addressed themselves to unprepared and reluctant audiences. Moreover, for many years our tenant-farmers have been struggling with such difficulties of their own, as have left them little time or inclination for devising expedients for improving the condition of their labourers. And it is likewise to be remembered that many of the farmers are themselves so little elevated above the peasantry in point of education and habits and domestic tastes, that it would be idle to expect that they should see any necessity for elevating the condition of the agricultural labourers.
This class of tenants must consider the present movement as fantastic, and absurd, and uncalled for, and they will prove, we fear, the greatest obstructives in the way of its success. So that if the truth is to be spoken, many proprietors would require first to improve the habits and elevate the character of their tenantry, before they attempt to elevate the social condition of their agricultural labourers. The nearer the tenant approaches the labourer in point of education and social habits, the more careless and indifferent is the former to the comforts of the latter, and the less inclined to ameliorate his condition. We think it by no means an impossible thing that there are not a few farmers throughout Scotland who are looking upon the present movement in behalf of our rural labourers not only as savouring of idle sentimentalism, but who are contemplating it with a jealous eye, as an attempt of the proprietors to place the condition of the servant upon the same platform with that of the master. There is, indeed, a class of small farmers, highly estimable and worthy, and quite fit, in respect of capital, for their position, who cultivate their possessions by means of their own families, aided by perhaps one or two servant-lads. In these cases the servants live truly as members of the family, and are treated as such; and this is the farm-service which, above all others, virtuous and thoughtful parents desire for their children.
The tenant-farmers are, probably, likewise prepared to rebut any charge of indifference brought against them, by stating that they have found so great difficulty in getting proper house-accommodation for their own families, and suitable and enlarged farm-buildings to enable them satisfactorily to carry on the business of the farm, and to meet the requirements of an improved husbandry, that the idea of asking a better style of cottages for their labourers would have been Utopian. The farmer, too, has but a temporary interest in the land, and but a temporary connection with the agricultural labourers upon his farm; and with more immediate wants and difficulties of his own to contend with, to suppose that he should expostulate with a reluctant proprietor, and set himself devotedly to improve and remodel the houses of his labourers, is to expect from him an extent of philanthropic enthusiasm quite uncommon, and, therefore, quite unreasonable. The landowner occupies a very different position—but, however inexplicable it may seem, he has not hitherto had his attention directed to the cottages of the labouring poor upon his estate. This confession of previous ignorance was ingenuously made by the speakers at the Edinburgh meeting, and we believe that they did not misrepresent the information upon the subject that had hitherto generally prevailed among the landed proprietors of Scotland. Lord Kinnaird, at a meeting of the “Dundee Model Lodging-House Association,” on 13th January, expressed himself as follows: “Until he had read that pamphlet (Mr Stuart’s), he had had no right idea of the bothies on his estate. Thinking such a matter was an arrangement purely between the farmer and his labourers, he had not visited them till lately; but having now done so, he felt they were a reproach to him, and must be improved.” And yet Lord Kinnaird resides for the most part upon his estate—he takes an anxious and most kindly interest in the moral, educational, and physical wellbeing of the people who live upon it,—and having such an acknowledgment from a nobleman so benevolent and active, the irresistible inference is, that other proprietors in his position are not only ignorant of the bothies, but of the condition of the cottages upon their properties.
It appears from Mr Stuart, that the parochial clergy, the body to which he belongs, have for many years had their attention anxiously directed towards the case of the agricultural labourers. He tells us that the synods of Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, and Angus and Mearns have instituted inquiries regarding their condition—these inquiries being chiefly intended, as might have been expected, to ascertain the moral, religious, and educational state of our labourers, although the effects of the bothy system and of feeing-markets upon the social condition of servants are likewise investigated. Through the courtesy of a clerical correspondent, we have before us reports from twenty-seven parishes in Morayshire, in answer to a series of questions circulated by the synod of Moray in 1848, as well as a copy of theElgin Courant, April 1848, containing a very full discussion by that ecclesiastical court on the moral and social condition of the agricultural labourers of that province. The synod of Angus and Mearns instituted an investigation of the same kind some fifteen years ago, and a most elaborate report, based upon the information collected, was drawn up. Measures were suggested for elevating the condition of the farm-servants; and in some counties pastoral addresses were read from the pulpits of the Established Church upon the subject. It appears, however, that this agitation of the question by the Church met with no countenance or encouragement from the laity. We know, indeed, that Sir John Stuart Forbes, and two or three other proprietors, tookthenan interest in the inquiry, and were alive to its importance—but, generally speaking, the proprietors and farmers seem to have been quite unprepared to take up the subject.
It is very curious, nevertheless, to observe that the very evils pointed out by Mr Stuart in his pamphlet, and the very remedies suggested by him, are all embraced and expounded in the reports of the ecclesiastical courts now before us.[6]It is a remarkable instance, apparently, of the well-known mental phenomenon, that the mind previously must have undergone some preparation for the reception of the truth, before the truth can suitably affect it. Mr Stuart has had the sagacity, or good fortune, to fix upon the opportune moment for making his appeal, and to find a benevolently disposed auditory. He has done what his brethren, in synods assembled, could not do. He has effectually hit the nail upon the head—and we hope he will reiterate the blow again and again, until he sees the objects of his benevolent wishes in some good measure obtained.
It appears to us that on such a subject as the present every thing approaching to exaggeration should be most anxiously avoided. There is a danger, now that the attention and interest of the public have been so awakened, that overdrawn pictures of the degraded condition of our Scottish peasantry will be indulged in; and this is all the more likely, as proving acceptable to the democratic classes, and as reflecting disgrace on the character of landed proprietors. In point of fact, we believe that it is unquestionable that our rural population, both in respect of their sanitary and moral condition, occupy a position very superior to that of the manufacturing classes of our towns. By the census of 1841, for every two deaths in agricultural districts there were more than three in our towns; and in towns exclusively manufacturing, such as Leeds and Birmingham, there were seven deaths for every two in agricultural localities. Glasgow is the only Scottish town where the statistics of mortality are noted, and there ten would die out of a population of three hundred, while out of the same number in agricultural counties there would be only three deaths. In the matter of moral statistics by the same census the commitments in manufacturing districts, compared with agricultural, were as five to one. We believe the statistics of drunkenness would report likewise in favour of the superior sobriety of our rural population, so that our agricultural labourers, it seems, are truly more healthy, more sober, more virtuous, at least in the eye of the criminal law, than those of the labouring classes in our towns. We believe that the agricultural labourers are better fed and better clothed, and, in many aspects of the case, as well housed as the labouring classes in our large towns and cities. In this fashion, if he pleases, the landowner may evade all appeals to his benevolence, and may scornfully reject all reproachful insinuations of having neglected the condition of the labouring poor upon his estates. He may well inquire how far he has contributed to raise the poor on his estate to a higher social condition in respect of health and sobriety, when contrasted with the poor of our towns; and if this has not been so much the necessary result of their circumstances and manner of life, that a very slender portion of the merit can be appropriated by him. The opulent inhabitants of our cities are not bound by any especial tie of social duty to the degraded and dissipated poor of the cities. They are not their tenants, nor are they engaged in their employment. Though living in close proximity with them, the rich are, for the most part, profoundly ignorant of the condition of their poorer fellow-citizens, who breathe the mephitic exhalations of unventilated lanes, and whose homes are but dismal cellars, into which the meridian sun, struggling through dense masses of hovering vapour, fails to transmit anything stronger than a murky twilight.
If the country gentleman can persuade himself that he holds no nearer relationship to the tenantry and labourers upon his estate, than the wealthy citizen does to the industrious poor who live within the same municipal bounds, but who otherwise are totally unconnected with them, it would be unreasonable to expect from such a one those expressions of regret which have fallen so gracefully from the lips of others, or that he will find any difficulty in escaping all appeals addressed to him, not only as he is not conscious of having overlooked any duty, but because he is prepared to deny that he has any duty to discharge in the matter. Or if the country gentleman can take up the very elevated position which a certain school of economists have of late been expounding and pressing upon his attention, then he will have reached a region so pure, and so superterrestrial as to be infinitely raised above all vulgar care about the comfort and welfare of those who till the glebe and tend the herds of that “dim spot which men call earth.” According to this high philosophy, the landowner is taught to look upon his land as a mere article of commerce, and that the great question with him ought to be to discover how, with the least possible outlay, he can raise from it the greatest possible revenue. To examine into the condition of the cottages upon the estate—to build new ones, and to improve the old—to do this personally, or, as that may be impossible, to order it to be done by some competent and responsible party—all this seems out of his department as the owner of the land and the recipient of the rent. If the farmer is content that his labourers should live in miserable hovels, where their physical energies must be debilitated, and where the decencies of their moral condition must suffer wrong, where their fitness for their daily toil is being impaired by the discomforts of their homes, and where, from the same cause, the period in the ploughman’s life of complete capability for his work must infallibly be abridged, what signifies all this to the landowner? His political economy saves him from all compunction. If the thews and sinews of the ploughman, by such treatment, become prematurely useless, it matters not—the wheels and pinions can be replaced, and other thews and sinews will be found to work the work. It is a devout hallucination upon the part of Mr Stuart to fancy that he can persuade such a landowner as this, that, on mere pecuniary grounds, it would prove a wise economy in him to build new cottages and to remodel the old, and to improve and add to the bothy accommodation. Mr Stuart’s argument on such a subject would necessarily be largely leavened with moral considerations, which the economics of the landlord did not embrace, and the mere money-profit looms dubiously in the distance. Mr Stuart would have no chance with such a stern philosopher as this, who could demonstrate by an irrefragable arithmetic that he could do the thing cheaper! We are sorry to think that any such party should be in the position of a landed proprietor. ’Tis a pity such a man had not had his money invested in the Three per Cents, or in a street of three-storeyed tenements suitable to accommodate the middle classes of society, who would take care of themselves, and, peradventure, of the laird likewise. We know no situation in human life so enviable as that of a country gentleman. His privileges are manifold, and his appropriate recreations and pleasures exquisite. His peculiar duties are indeed very responsible, but they are deeply interesting and delightful. Surely a country gentleman is knit by dearer and more sacred ties to the people that live upon his estate, and that cultivate his fields, than the rich man of the city to the poor artisan, to whom he is united by the accident of his living in the neighbouring street. Nay, we hope that no country gentleman would care to be thought actuated by no warmer or kindlier feelings towards the pendiclers and poor cottagers that dwell on his estate, than the potent noblesse of the cotton-mills can reasonably be expected to be towards the shadowy troops of sallow girls that, like so many animal automata, ply their nimble fingers o’er the power-looms and spinning-jennies of their tall-chimneyed temples. If the accursed commercial element is henceforth to be the sole ruling motive in the management of landed property, the country gentleman will speedily sink to the level of a commercial gentleman. The charms of his position will die away—the honours now so spontaneously rendered to him will be withheld—and the ancestral influence of his house and name will become the poet’s dream. We have contrasted the condition of the labouring poor in the country with that of the labouring poor in the town, but there can be no just comparison betwixt the position of a landed proprietor, and the duties which it entails towards the agricultural labourers on his property, and the position of a mill-spinner towards the people whom he employs; and we should be sorry if any landowner should seek in this way to vindicate his subsequent neglect of the duties which Providence has manifestly laid upon him. If our landed proprietors are not imbued with some just sense of the responsibilities of their station, and actuated by some steadfast determination to practise self-denial in other matters, that they may improve the condition of the industrious poor upon their properties, we despair utterly of any permanent practical good resulting from the present movement. If our farmers are, as a body, not prepared at present heartily to enter upon the work of reformation, we have to thank one class of politicians who have for years been industriously indoctrinating the farmer with the dogma that his business, in its highest phase, was just the manufacture of certain agricultural products from the soil. The farmer long listened in wonder to the lecturer, not knowing well what the high-sounding philosophy might mean. But he at last embraced the doctrine, and he now, we fear, too often entertains the feelings which the doctrine was so likely to engender. As a manufacturer, the farmer cannot for his life see that he has any more concernment than any other manufacturer with the condition, character, and habits of his operatives. For a year he hires them, and they go, and he sees them no more. The root of the evil Mr Stuart correctly traces up to the altered feelings and conduct of proprietors and tenants towards their dependants.
Mr Stuart, in speaking of our agricultural labourers, “as things were” some sixty years ago, adverts to a period when the servants lived in family with their masters—when the master sat patriarchally at the head of his table, surrounded by his children and domestics, and when all knelt at the same family altar to offer up the evening prayer. The social characteristics of the people of that day were excellent; but their creature comforts were few, and their agriculture wretched. It was the era of run-rig, of outfield and infield—the former being scourged as the common foe—while on the latter our agricultural sires practised high farming. During the summer the men were half idle, and in the winter they were wholly so, saving that occasionally in the forenoon that venerable implement the flail, wielded by a lusty arm, might be heard dropping its minute-guns on the barn-floor. The women wrought the work in summer, and plied the wheel in winter. We are old enough to remember the spinning-wheel, and are disposed to echo the sentiment of the poet—
“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend,Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute;And care a comforter that best could suitHer froward mood, and softliest reprehend.”
“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend,Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute;And care a comforter that best could suitHer froward mood, and softliest reprehend.”
“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend,Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute;And care a comforter that best could suitHer froward mood, and softliest reprehend.”
“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend,
Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute;
And care a comforter that best could suit
Her froward mood, and softliest reprehend.”
Mr Stuart reverts to this bygone age in a strain of tenderness; but he faithfully depicts its grievous physical disadvantages as they were experienced by the poor. There is a dash of romance in Mr Stuart’s genial nature, and he has interwoven his narrative with some quaint old-world reminiscences; but his excellent sense conducts him always to the sound conclusion. He does not idly sigh for that which has passed away; and he sees that the habits of a former age, if they could be recalled, would not suit the taste of the present generation, nor meet the exigencies of the existing agriculture. In certain districts of Aberdeenshire and elsewhere, the farm-servants may be said yet to live in the family—that is, they get their food in the kitchen, and by the kitchen-fire they sit in the winter evenings until they retire to their beds, which are generally in the stable. But the master and his family are meanwhile in the parlour. The master’s restraining presence is not in the kitchen; and upon the testimony alike of farmers and of clergymen, now lying upon our table, the results of the system are so deplorable, that bothies are asked for and preferred as the least of two evils.
In portraying the progress of agricultural improvement, Mr Stuart discovers the origin of the bothy and bondager systems. The throwing two or three farms into one, and the gradual decay of the cot-houses, and the aversion of the proprietor to build new ones, from a mistaken economy, originated both modes of accommodating farm-servants. But if such were the causes of the evil, its cure is self-evident. We have only to retrace our steps, and we will recover the position which we have abandoned. It took, however, half a century to develop the evil, and not in a day can we hope to see the remedy accomplished. In building more cottages, then, you take the sure way of mitigating the evils of both systems; and by proceeding in this work, if you do not ultimately exterminate the evil, you will so circumscribe and diminish it that it must become all but innocuous. The practice of enlarging farms has gone far enough, but if the expense of their subdivision were not intolerable, we would not in this item undo what we have done. There can be no doubt that our large farmers have been the great improvers; not only have they led the way in improving the cultivation of the soil and the stock of the country, but they have been the parties who have introduced to public notice the new manures, and the new and better implements of husbandry, and to them we now look as indispensable and powerful auxiliaries in elevating the social condition of the labourers. On the large farm, all that is wanted is a proportionate increase of cottages to accommodate the staff of agricultural servants, with a few houses on the outskirts of the farm for jobbers and day-labourers, whose assistance, with that of their families, may be got at a busy season on the farm.
At all times, and in all places, and by all sorts of people, the bothy is condemned. Mr Stuart condemns it, and laments the evils which it originates, and the habits which it induces, and the immoralities which it cherishes; but we are sorry to think that he writes so hopelessly about the possibility of its extinction. We would have been better pleased had he pronounced its doom, and had he proclaimed against it, in unmistakable accents, a war of extermination, gradual but sure, and inexorable. It merits nothing but hearty and unhesitating condemnation. We are well acquainted with bothy economics, and we never knew but one that was even decently conducted. Mr Stuart seems to think the evil necessary and irremovable, and that the only thing left to the philanthropist is to mitigate its horrors. But why so? The bothy system is partial and local. There are large provinces of the kingdom where it is totally unknown. We have the ocular demonstration, then, that it is not indispensable. But Mr Stuart says, that in escaping Charybdis, you sail the good ship Agriculture straight into the boiling quicksand of Syrtis—that, the bothy abandoned, you irretrievably encounter the evils of the bondager system. We are humbly of opinion, however, that our excellent friend somewhat overstates the evils of this latter system. There are inconveniences and disadvantages connected with it, but these are not for a moment to be compared with the discomforts, and with the temptations to nocturnal rambling and loose living, with which the bothy system is so beset. The bondager system does not affect young ploughman lads in the slightest degree; it is limited to young women, and to them the system is the same as domestic service in the farmer’s house, when field-work is associated with that service. But Mr Stuart seems to confound the bondager with the cottage system, while in reality they have no necessary connection. There are two bugbears in the way of abolishing the bothy—the one the landlords, and the other the tenants. The landlord is alarmed at the expense of building the necessary cottages. This will be got over. The tenant is alarmed at the expense of maintaining the ploughman in the cottage when built—a most remarkable mistake. But so it is that, be-north the Forth, many farmers, from long habit, and from ignorance of the cottage system as it exists in the Border counties, have become so wedded to the bothy, that in accomplishing its abolition we expect more resistance from them than from landlords. The model bothy, in mere material accommodation, will effect nothing unless it has separate apartments, furnished with fire and light, and other necessary appliances; and if it be so, where will be its superior economy to either landlord or tenant, when contrasted with the expense of a separate cottage? Abrogate the bothy system entirely, for otherwise moralists may lament in vain, and parents bewail the ruined virtue of their children.
Considering apparently the system too firmly rooted to admit of eradication, Mr Stuart strenuously inculcates the instant improvement of the bothy accommodation. But if he succeeds, will he not have stereotyped the bothy as a permanent part of the economy and constitution of the farm; and what, then, has been achieved? The physical discomforts of the bothy will have in a good measure disappeared, but the place is not disinfected of the moral contagion which the system communicates. Let half-a-dozen of ploughman lads be associated in a bothy, and however tidy and snug and commodious the apartments, yet when their age and circumstances are remembered—when it is considered that they are without a head, to control, counsel, and direct them, that each is his own master—we confess that to us it seems chimerical to expect that any desirable measure of decency, or sobriety, or order, will prevail within the walls of the bothy. It is in vain to tell a well-disposed lad that he can escape the pollution of a wicked associate in the bothy, by retiring to his own apartment. How can he sit there on a winter evening (winter is the season when bothy wickedness takes its swing), unaccommodated as it is either with fire or light? We fear, therefore, that the “model bothy” even would not arrest or extinguish the moral mischief that emanates from this system. It is remarkable that the speakers at the Edinburgh meetings do not say that they contemplate the improvement of the bothy system. Their resolution to encourage the multiplication of suitable cottages for the labourers on the farm, they saw, involved in due time the extinction of the bothy system. Moreover, we fancy that neither the Duke of Buccleuch nor the Marquis of Tweeddale has a single bothy upon their estates, unless one for the journeymen gardeners in the vicinity of their residences. Once erect a sufficiency of cottages, and the unmarried lads will find a sister, or aunt, or some female relative to keep house for them. Having such an object before them, they will be taught habits of economy, and will save money, that they may be ready to furnish a cottage. Once in it, they have a home and property, and will become attached to their situation. The bothy turns ploughmen intonomads, and gives them restless, undomestic, and migratory habits. Erect a sufficiency of cottages, and the bothy will die a natural death. No proprietor or tenant will erect or maintain a bothy for a solitary ploughman, who happens to have no female friend who can cook his food and keep his cottage. Infallibly he will find other accommodation. The boy, to whom the bothy is a very school of corruption, ought to live in family with the master, and it should be the master’s duty to watch over his morals, and to aid in some manner in his education. If he is a parent, let him say how he would like his own boy, when he leaves the paternal roof, to be neglected, tempted, corrupted.
Mr Stuart quotes from Mr Laing’s book on Norway a description of the Norwegianborststueor bothy, which is commodious and comfortable, and well supplied with all conveniences; and then he asks, “Now, I would hold such to be a model bothy; and cannot the farming in Scotland afford to give what it affords to give in Norway?” No doubt of it, provided you demonstrate that the bothy is indispensable; but to that premise we demur. Mr Laing communicates nothing to us of the moral effects of theborststue, which would be modified by the social habits of the people, and by the degree of kindly intercourse subsisting between master and servant. But in fact the example of Norway, neither in the matter of cottages nor bothies, is truly applicable to our country. In Norway the cottage is a loghouse, and costs nothing but the nails and the window-glass, while every Norwegian knows enough of loghouse-carpentry to erect a cottage for himself. With regard to theborststue, there is a necessity for it in Norway that does not exist here. The outdoor farm-work, which meets with but partial interruptions in our climate, is at an absolute standstill in Norway for six months of the year, from the severity of a protracted winter. The result is, that the outdoor work must be accomplished during a few weeks in spring, and of course a more numerous staff of servants must be maintained than with us; for, from the military and passport system prevailing in Norway, it is impossible to summon in an additional supply of workers to suit the emergency. The tenant-farmer is thus more dependent on the agricultural labourers; and we believe that there prevails in Norway more of that friendly interchange of sympathy and of kindness between master and servant than now unhappily characterises our social condition, which, nevertheless, sweetens all toil, and turns aside the poisoned arrow of temptation, and plucks the sting from suffering, whether experienced in Scottish bothy or Norwegianborststue. For ourselves, we have only one prescription for the bothy system, and that is, raze it. The system is too pregnant with all moral evil to be temporised with. We cannot consent to any parley, to negotiate for delay, and to write protocols anent its possible improvement. We are almost certain that the minister of Oathlaw agrees with us, but that he has thought it prudent to soften his voice when speaking of the bothy, in the fear that it would alarm his auditors at the revolutionary extent of his demands. But now that he has caught the ear of the noble and the good of the land, and awakened in generous hearts so magnanimous a response, let the lute become a trumpet in his hand, and let him blow a blast so loud and clear as shall scatter this disgrace of Scottish agriculture to the winds of heaven.
Most earnestly do we press upon our readers that our Scottish peasantry, and agricultural labourers, and common ploughmen, are highly deserving of consideration and kindness, and of every attempt that can be made to increase their comforts and to ameliorate their moral and social condition. There is an incredible and most criminal ignorance not only among the higher, but among the middle classes of society, regarding at once the habits and hardships of this important class of the community. The newspaper paragraphist, in his select vocabulary, describes the ploughman as a clown, a clodpole, a lout. That smart draper, with the exquisitely-tied cravat and his inimitably arranged hair, all redolent of musk, smiles complacently when he sees John the hind rolling along the pavement on his huge hobnailed boots, and considers him the very impersonation of stolidity. John’s dress is appropriate, however, to his calling, and to see the draper in pumps and silk stockings floundering through a new-ploughed field, or picking his steps daintily through a feeding-byre, where the musk must yield to the ammonia, would, we fancy, be a phenomenon not less provocative of laughter. Nothing is so ridiculous as the very prevalent idea that our Scottish agricultural labourers are a stupid race. They are shrewd, sagacious, and intelligent abouttheir own business; and because they are so, they are continually being drafted away to England and Ireland. The employments of a common ploughman are various, and of a nature calculated to cultivate his powers of observation and of thought. Mr Stephens, after describing the extent of observation, of judgment, and of patience, required in a good ploughman, adds—“To be so accomplished implies the possession of talent of no mean order.”—Book of the Farm, vol. i. p. 163. Talent necessary for a ploughman! exclaims the incredulous and amazed citizen, and fancies that the author must speak ironically. Nay; he never wrote soberer truth in his lifetime, and in your ignorance you wonder.
There is another reason why not only the comforts, but why the moral and intellectual powers of the agricultural labourer should be cared for. The common ploughman has committed to his trust property which, on a very moderate computation, may be valued at £100. This property, of a nature so likely to receive injury from carelessness and inattention, is daily in his hands, and under his charge, and at his mercy. We need scarcely add, too, how deeply he may in other respects injure his employer, as, for instance, by the imperfect ploughing or careless sowing of a field. To what common servant, in any sphere of life, is property so valuable so exclusively intrusted? It is plain that a party so confided in, as a ploughman must be, ought not to have his sense of responsibility and of moral obligation blunted and impaired by barbarous neglect. Hitherto our agricultural labourers have not occupied themselves with discussing “the rights of labour and the duties of capital.” But if landlords and tenants are resolved to consider the whole management of land as a mere matter of commerce, we cannot see why these operatives should not be led to philosophise as well as others. The labourer may apply in all equity that principle to his own case which the landlord and tenant are severally applying to theirs. The severance between employer and employed has of late been developed to an extent never before witnessed in any age, and it threatens, at this moment, to throw a terrific chasm athwart the whole structure of society. Not only among mill-masters and men, but among many other classes very differently circumstanced, have we witnessed combination and counter-combination, and their disastrous consequences. A slight agrarian grumbling might possibly do good; and, from all that we can learn, there is a sulky discontent slumbering in many an honest fellow’s bosom, that could easily be fanned, by a skilful experimenter, into a visible flame. It will be better, in every respect, to anticipate and ward off the evil. Its causes and its cure have been well expounded by Mr Stuart. But if our agricultural labourers are too patient sufferers to complain, too sensible to imbibe the pestilent doctrines of Messrs Newton and Cowel, and too wide apart to have it in their power to combine, whether for good or for evil—and if, on these accounts, there is no ground for alarm, is it wise, is it kind of you, to take advantage of their peaceful dispositions, and of their powerlessness to unite in proclaiming their wrongs, and in vindicating their rights? There is a remedy within the reach of many of them, and of which they are silently availing themselves. They can emigrate. They are doing so quietly, determinedly. They are not absolutelyastricti glebæ. The canker of neglect is eating away the ties that bind them to their Fatherland. Multitudes of the best of them have gone, and thousands would follow if they had the means. Emigration, if it proceeds unchecked, will render “strikes” unnecessary, even if we are inclined to consider such things as visionary and impossible among an agricultural population.
They who have not read Mr Stuart’s appeal, may conclude, from the professed object of that Association to which his appeal has conducted, that he has inculcated nothing more than the improvement of existing cottages, and the building of many new ones more commodious and comfortable. His philanthropy, however, is more comprehensive. With an excursive pen he reviews the whole moral, educational, and social characteristics of the agricultural labourer’s condition, and sketches the remedies for its various evils. When, therefore, Mr Stuart merely proposed at the meeting of the 10th January, as the main feature of the proposed Association, the establishment of an office in Edinburgh for the reception of plans and models, and improved fittings and furnishings for cottages, accessible to all inquirers, it seemed to us, retaining as we did a delightful reminiscence of his pamphlet, a most impotent conclusion. He appeared to have descended from the high moral arena into the mortar-tub, and we were in terror lest some journalist, in a slashing leader, should cover his scheme with inextinguishable burlesque. It seemed likewise a mystery to us how there could be such extreme difficulty in erecting a commodious and comfortable cottage, as that an office in our metropolis should be required for the exhibition of right models. It might have looked that, instead of a labourer’s cottage, it was a medieval temple of most intricate composite that was required, and for the conception of which the genius of Scottish architecture was unequal without the aid of unusual patronage. We feared, too, that the Association might be described by some malignant pen as a company of Scottish proprietors resolving to raise the marketable value of their estates by adding to the buildings thereupon. Such silly caricatures might perhaps have been anticipated, and in fact some small sneers were dropped by one or two of the Radical newspapers; but the admirable tone of the speeches at the meeting, when the Association was formed, seemed for the time to have stayed the old hatred of the democratic press towards our landed proprietors. That our readers may understand correctly the intentions and views of “The Association for promoting improvement in the dwellings and domestic condition of agricultural labourers in Scotland,” we recommend to their perusal the report of the committee now published, and which we hope may be widely circulated. The noblemen and country gentlemen composing the Association have combined,notfor the purpose of raising their rentals, but for the purpose of improving the domestic condition of the agricultural labourers, by improving their dwellings. They have united together for the purpose of directing attention to the subject, and of encouraging and aiding others in removing an evil which they candidly confess they have hitherto overlooked and neglected. The evil is of long standing and of gigantic dimensions, and it has been felt that the benevolent zeal and efforts of individuals required to be concentred into the potent agency of one national association, to effect its abatement and to work out its final extinction. In the matter of house accommodation for our agricultural labourers, while on many estates a very great deal has been done to improve it, yet very generally over the kingdom it is a notorious fact that no improvement in their dwellings has taken place for the last half-century. One article of furniture in the cottages of our Scottish peasantry has excited the indignation of all but those who repose their weary limbs on it—we refer to the box-bed. The medical faculty time immemorial have denounced it as a very “fever case.” Mr Stuart and his reverend brethren have lamented the stifling insalubrity of the formidable structure. Fine ladies and gentlemen have wondered at the stupid attachment of the Scottish peasant to a dormitory so barbarous. The Duke of Buccleuch has solved the riddle. He tells us, that when he ordered the box-bed to be taken out of the cottage down came the roof! And thus that which has been the stay and support of many a tottering tenement has been most ignorantly condemned. Nor is this all. So very damp and cold are too many of the cottages, that in order to exclude these evils in some measure by night, the box-bed is indispensable during eight months of the year; and we predict that unless comfortable cottages, rightly roofed, lathed, and floored are erected, the box-bed will prove stronger than Mr Stuart, and will retain its hold on the affections of the labourer, upholding at once its own position and the roof of the dwelling that affects to shelter it from the elements. That there is likewise a lack of cottages in our agricultural districts is unquestionable. They have been allowed to decay and disappear, from economical considerations entirely delusive, to an extent extremely prejudicial. The diminished population of our rural parishes proves the fact; and if any one will contrast the census papers of 1841 with those of 1851, which exhibit the number of the inhabited houses in the several counties of Scotland, they will find a demonstration that may probably startle them. The Association takes it for granted that an improved domestic condition will follow in the wake of improved dwellings being given to the poor, and no thoughtful and observing person will doubt this. It has been beautifully said, “Between physical and moral delicacy a connection has been observed, which, though founded by the imagination, is far from being imaginary. Howard and others have remarked it. It is an antidote against sloth, and keeps alive the idea of decent restraint and the habit of circumspection. Moral purity and physical are spoken of in the same language; scarce can you inculcate or command the one, but some share of approbation reflects itself upon the other. In minds in which the least germ of Christianity has been planted, this association can scarce fail of having taken root: scarce a page of Scripture but recalls it.” It is of the very essence of every good system to develop the virtues necessary to its success; and to the humanising influence of a comfortable and commodious cottage, old habits of filthiness and sloth would gradually yield, and would every day become a lessening evil. Such cottages would secure at once the services of the best class of workmen, and thus a mercenary self-interest would find it to its advantage to follow where benevolence had led the way. The influence of example upon the rich, and the influence of superior house-accommodation upon the social condition of the poor, must be gradual. This has been duly contemplated.
It is scarcely necessary, we fancy, to expound this part of the case. It is now pretty generally understood. If, however, any of our readers have not considered this subject, or continue to entertain some lingering doubts regarding the effects of improved house-accommodation upon the social, sanitary, and moral condition of the people, we most anxiously recommend to their perusal Dr Southwood Smith’s “Results of Sanitary Improvement, illustrated by the operation of the metropolitan societies for improving the dwellings of the industrious classes, &c.” The pamphlet costs twopence, and it may take a quarter of an hour to read it; but never, we believe, were statistics ever given to the world so surprising and so encouraging,—matter at once so suggestive of deep thought, and so animating to the aspirations of practical philanthropy. Lord Shaftesbury is at present circulating this most pregnant epitome of the effects of sanitary improvement among the parochial boards of Scotland. It is a most seasonable missive—vindicating the speculations of Mr Stuart, and placing on the basis of demonstration the certainty of the effect of the intended operations of the Duke of Buccleuch’s association. The pecuniary element will be thought our main difficulty, but we are quite satisfied that the tendency is to exaggerate it. Be it remembered that we want nocottages ornées, and (with your leave, Mr Stuart) no model bothies, but merely warm, dry, convenient houses for honest ploughmen to live in. Let wealthy proprietors, if they please, adorn their estates with picturesque villas, crowned with projecting roofs and ornamental chimneys; but the Association over which the Duke of Buccleuch presides does not desire a single sixpence to be spent which will not contribute to the comfort of the cottage. The reformatory change may proceed by degrees, and in no one year need the outlay be serious; but on this part of the subject we refer our readers to the views of Sir Ralph Anstruther, as contained in his speech on the 10th January, and more fully explained in his letter (Courant, January 20th). While the Association professes, in the mean time (and we think wisely and judiciously), to limit its attention to the improvement of the dwellings of agricultural labourers, and thereby to raise their domestic condition, it seems evident that the basis of its operations may be easily extended, and that the benevolent object in view will almost naturally widen that basis. That object is to ameliorate the domestic condition of the labourer; but if other causes as well as that of improved house-accommodation will contribute towards the wished-for amelioration, these, it may be expected, in due time will come to be embraced within the benevolent range of its fostering influence. To prevent misapprehension and remove ignorance, we would respectfully suggest the propriety of the Association instituting a statistical inquiry into the physical, moral, and educational condition of the agricultural labourers of the kingdom. Such statistics would form a valuable supplement to the agricultural statistics collected under the instruction of Mr Hall Maxwell. Information seems necessary to enable the Association rightly to exercise its influence, even in improving the dwellings of the poor. In some parts of the west of Scotland a sort of mud cottage is raised at an expense of £3! and a fit model for one county may be utterly unfit for another. All requisite information we believe could be obtained, by addressing a schedule of inquiry to the parochial clergy, who are manifestly ready to lend their aid. In any event, our landed proprietors cannot well afford to have more “news from the farm” thrust upon them by the spontaneous exertions of volunteer philanthropists. The public, indeed, seem to have been infinitely surprised that our landed proprietors should have been so ignorant of the condition of the dwellings and of the circumstances of the people upon their estates; and the inference is, that there must have been something grievously wrong in the management of their affairs. No man, of course, can expect that the proprietor of a large landed estate should know minutely the condition of every cottage on it, and the discomforts of its poor inhabitant. But the ignorance confessed goes greatly beyond this. It was surely the more immediate duty of the tenant-farmer to have protected his dependants, and to have represented their disadvantages to the proprietor. And what has the factor been doing in the mean time? General Lindsay, at the meeting of the 10th January, in a speech overflowing with admirable feeling, said, that “the factor was afraid of increasing his expenditure.” Quite right; but why was he not afraid, too, of misrepresenting the kindly feelings of his constituent towards the industrious poor upon his estate—of concealing from him knowledge which, if he wished to do his duty, it was indispensable for him to possess—of alienating from him and his house the love and veneration ofhis people—of rendering his privileges odious now, and of imperilling his position on any coming convulsion of the commonwealth? We have not only now the evil of non-resident proprietors, but, in many cases, the evil of non-resident factors. The door of communication betwixt landlord and tenant is thus effectually shut up; and the poor cottager, who was wont to have access even to “his honour,” finds things so altered that an audience with the factor is become impossible. The accountant is as ignorant as his constituent “of the dwellings and domestic condition of the agricultural labourers,” and thus there is a complete abnegation of all the peculiar duties and responsibilities which Providence has manifestly laid on the owners of land. It is impossible to deny, on the other hand, that very many of the tenant-farmers, imitating the manners of their betters, have become sadly neglectful of the duties which they owe their dependants. To give as little and get as much as he can, is now, in too many cases, the short and simple rubric of that code which guides the landlord in his contract with the tenant. The tenant extends the principle, and looks upon the labour of his ploughman as a mere purchaseable article, that supplements the deficiency of machinery, and is necessary to guide the muscular energies of the horse. With the ploughman, however, the sale of his labour is the sale of himself—the devotion of his sentient nature, with feelings, affections, sympathies, as lively as those of his master, and with a pride and self-esteem as sensitive to unkindness and wrong. It was in every respect seemly that the present movement should originate with the proprietors, for the house-accommodation must plainly be given by them; but now that they have intimated, in so kind words, their good wishes and benevolent intentions, we hope the farmers will consider whether expressions of “repentance” for the past are not due from them as well as from others, and whether works “meet for repentance” should not instantly be undertaken by them. Because the landlord has made his “confession,” it is conceivable that the tenant may now fancy that nothing remains but that he should make a clamorous onset on the laird for more cottages. We hope he will not be unreasonable, but will perceive that he must put his own shoulder to the work, and be prepared to make some sacrifices, and to practice some self-denial. We fear that some of the tenantry require to be instructed, stimulated, and watched in discharging that part of the duty which falls to them in promoting the desired reformation. We are quite of the opinion of the Duke of Buccleuch, that more cottages should not be let with the farm than the number necessary to accommodate the servants requisite for the work of the farm. The other cottagers should rent their holdings immediately from the landlord.
We know no class of workmen who have so few holidays, and so few opportunities for rational recreation, as our ploughmen. They may have the right to go to some annual feeing-market, and out of this solitary feast the poor fellows try naturally to extract as much pleasure as they can, turning the day into a carnival of many-coloured evil. All other classes of workpeople have their occasional holiday—their trip by an excursion-train—the Saturday afternoon, in a slack season, to see friends and kindred; but no such pleasures fall to the ploughman’s lot. In the winter, indeed, he is on “short time,” but what is done to make his evening hours pleasant, profitable, instructive? In the agricultural world we shall certainly have no “lock-out,” and perhaps no “strike,” but it may be wise, at least, to anticipate possible contingencies by acts of kindness and of well-considered indulgence. The yawning gulf betwixt the high and the low of the land is the most ominous evil of these times, and should be bridged over by sympathetic communication whilst it can. The wintry neglect of his superiors is worse to be borne by the labourer than the cold of his miserable cottage. Let us listen to Mr Stuart on an evil which seems to have entered like iron into his kindly soul. Addressing landlords, he says—
“Let their visits and their smile be frequently seen in the house of the poorest cottar, although he be but a hired labourer; for not fifty years ago, that same man would have been a crofter, or a small farmer, waiting on ‘his honour,’ and welcomed by ‘his honour,’ with his rent or his bondage. That he is not so now, is owing more to ‘his honour’s’ change of customs for his own profit, than to the cottar’s own fault, or to the profit of the cottar’s own social position and feelings. Let there be some upmaking, then, for this change, so far as such things can be made up for, not in the shape of money, but in that which his forefathers valued much more than money, and which he will value as highly again, if ‘his honour’ will only but give him time and means whereby he may recover his self-esteem and his proper training; and one of the most powerful and most valued of all these means would, in a little time, be ‘his honour’s’ friendly visits to his humble dwelling.”
Now that the Scottish people know that the Duke of Buccleuch finds time to inquire personally into the condition of the peasantry on his estates, no proprietor, however ancient his lineage and proud his name, will be excused who fails to go and do likewise, or who fails at least to acquaint himself with the condition of the labourers who cultivate his fields. Personal inquiry we would recommend, although it should not lead to the rendering of one cottage more comfortable than it was before. We recommend it for the proprietor’s own behoof. “The most certain softeners of a man’s moral skin, and sweeteners of his blood, are, I am sure, domestic intercourse in a happy marriage, andintercourse with the poor,” writes Arnold; and, as if he had felt the virtue flowing out of such intercourse, he repeats the thought thus in another place, “Prayer, and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the two great safeguards of spiritual life.” One-half the world does not know how the other half lives, and one-half of the bitternesses of human life arises from our not understanding one another. Little do the great ones of the earth know how much they lose by avoiding kindly acquaintance with poor and humble neighbours.
We know of no public meeting that has taken place in our time, where the speeches delivered possessed a higher moral value than those that fell from the speakers at the meeting of the 10th January last. The turbulent, disrupted, and gloomy condition of the manufacturing classes, rendered them admirably seasonable. They have shed a benignant influence over the agricultural community. They have awakened hopes that were growing faint, and fine old Scottish feelings that were dying out, and have proved a healing anodyne to a wound that was rankling in many a bosom. The opening speech of the noble chairman we have read more than once, and ever with renewed delight. Many an honest labourer has read it too, with glistening eye and joyful heart, and its perusal has prepared him for fighting more heroically the battle of his life. Some of the sentiments of the noble Duke we cannot withhold from our columns:—
“He thought it would not be disputed that, generally speaking, throughout Scotland, the habitations of these labourers were very defective, especially in those accommodations for comfort and delicacy. In former days the farm-servant was accommodated in the farmer’s house, where he took his meals, and so was under the moral control of his employers. But now the farm-labourer was put into a bothy, generally a most wretched place to live in, and often the worst building on the farm. He could not blink the question involved in the subject. They had not come there to bandy compliments to one another, but to speak the truth. It might be said to him and those who came there to find fault with the present system: You ought to come with clean hands, and be able to say that all the bothies on your estate were such as they ought to be. He confessed with shame that he could show as bad specimens on his property as could be found in Scotland. He would not conceal it that the condition of many of the cottages on his estate was as bad as could be. How this state of things had arisen it was not difficult to see.... He examined a number of their cottages himself, and found many of them quite in a falling-down state. In one of them, when he took a box-bed out of it, down came the roof. Such things would be found not so very uncommon if these cottages were looked into. Then what an evil effect such houses had upon the moral feelings of those who occupied them! Many of the persons who lived in them were highly educated, and it might well be conceived that a person of refinement living in a place fit for a pig would be discontented, as well as unhappy. How could they expect, when they saw men, women, and children all living and sleeping in one apartment, that they could be otherwise than demoralised? Could they wonder that all their delicacy of feeling was destroyed? Mothers had said to him, how could they bring up their daughters with respectability when there was not that separation of rooms which there ought to be? Then there was a great disinclination on the part of the tenantry to the landlord taking these cottages into his hand. They said they must have every single thing under their own control. It was all very well for them to say that as regarded the lodgment of their domestic and special farm-servants, but it did not follow that it was absolutely necessary that all the cottages of the agricultural labourers should belong to the farmer. He did not think that it was right that the farm-labourer should be bound down to work for one man only. But the person who really benefited by the landlord taking the cottage into his own hands was the farm-labourer himself; and he had seen the moral effect produced by providing better houses for this class of labourers, in a quarter where thieving and poaching had formerly been the disgrace of the people; but since their houses were improved, there was a great and beneficial reformation in these respects. It was really gratifying to see the change which took place in the feelings of these people towards their landlord, when they knew he was taking an interest in their welfare. Here, when he passed, they showed they regarded him as their friend, and were not filled with unpleasant suspicions about him.”
The gems in the ducal coronet never emitted a tenderer or more fascinating ray than when its noble owner entered the lowly cottage on his mission of kindness, and since the preceding sentiments were spoken, we believe that from many a Scottish heart the fervent prayer has been sent to heaven’s gate, that “the good Buccleuch” may long be spared to his country.