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 THE LIBRARY 
 4 OF 
 
 I^THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW 
 
 ENGLISH COUNTEY LIFE 
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY 
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN 
 
 THE FARMERS 
 
 THE PEASANTRY 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 T. E. KEBBEL, M.A. 
 
 author of 
 
 'agricultural labourers," 'essays in history and politics,' 
 ' life of lord beaconsfield,' etc. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 M D C C C X C I 
 
 AU Rights reserved
 
 533 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 The public lias recently shown so lively a 
 curiosity touching everything connected with 
 English rural life, that I should probably have 
 been tempted to try my fortune with these 
 sketches, even had no other reason existed 
 for giving them to the world in their present 
 form, and under my own name. But I have 
 been prompted to do so by another motive 
 as well. Some parts of this volume are only 
 the reproduction in other words, of thoughts, 
 opinions, and descriptions, first printed many 
 
 1104498
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 years ago, while others have been written 
 with more direct reference to passing events, 
 and the changed conditions of country society 
 which I have lived to witness. But the 
 interest which has been awakened in the 
 condition of the agricultural poor ever since 
 they were invested with political power has 
 brought, and is daily bringing, numerous 
 other writers into the field, in whose works 
 I often see embodied much that I was the 
 first to point out, both long ago, and only 
 yesterday. I am not so vain as to be ac- 
 cusing any one of plagiarism ; but I hope I 
 may be excused for wishing to appropriate 
 to myself what is really my own, whether 
 it is true or false, good, bad, or indiff'erent. 
 The pictures here drawn of the older gener- 
 ation of clergy, farmers, country gentlemen, 
 and labourers, are founded on long personal 
 familiarity with all four; extending over a
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 period of more than thirty years, during 
 which I lived among them, and had abun- 
 dant opportunities of studying their habits, 
 characters, and ideas. Since my home ceased 
 to be in the country, I have continued fre- 
 quently to reside there, and have kept up 
 my knowledge of country affairs and country 
 people down to the present time. This little 
 book, therefore, whatever its faults or errors, 
 is founded on actual experience ; and on that 
 kind of knowledge which comes from long 
 habit, association, and sympathy, and is not 
 hastily acquired to meet any particular de- 
 mand. There are only one or two passages 
 which form exceptions to the rule, and they 
 are those which relate to the actual earnino-s 
 and expenditure of the agricultural labourer, 
 taken, with some other statistics, directly from 
 my own work, ' The Agricultural Labourer, 
 of which a new edition was published in 1887.
 
 Vlll rHEFACE. 
 
 These figures were, as I have stated in the 
 text, derived from my own personal inquiries 
 amonof the farmers and labourers themselves 
 for the purpose of that particular work. 
 
 T. E. KEBBEL. 
 
 London, Oct. 29, 1891.
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 
 
 TN" his notes to 'Waverley,' Sir Walter Scott re- 
 marks of certain changes which had taken place 
 in Scotland between 1745 and the end of the eigh- 
 teenth century, that they had made the Scotland of 
 his own day as unlike what it was sixty years be- 
 fore as the England of sixty years before was to the 
 England of Elizabeth. I have not sufficient know- 
 ledge of the country to say whether the further 
 changes which have taken place since Sir Walter 
 wrote have created as wide a gap between the Scot- 
 land of 1886 and of 1806 as existed between the 
 Scotland of Sir Arthur Wardour and the Scotland 
 of Baron Bradwardine. But of this I am sure, that 
 
 A
 
 2 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 were any one to write a story of English rural life, 
 entitled ' 'Tis Sixty Years since,' he would have to 
 depict a state of manners almost as unfamiliar to 
 the present generation as the manners drawn by 
 Fielding and Eichardson. George Eliot's earlier 
 novels, ' Adam Bede,' ' Silas Marner,' and ' Scenes of 
 Clerical Life,' have to some extent done this. But 
 they belong to a still earlier period, the last ten 
 years of the eighteenth and the first ten years of 
 the nineteenth century, when not a ripple yet moved 
 over the surface of rural society to tell of a coming 
 chano-e of weather. The influence of the French 
 Ee volution was visible in the large towns long be- 
 fore it penetrated to the secluded agricultural vil- 
 lages buried among their woods and lanes; and 
 when rumours of it did reach them, the only effect 
 was to intensify their natural conservatism and 
 make them cling more closely than ever to the old 
 order of things. lUit my own reminiscences refer 
 rather to a time when the old and the new order of 
 ideas were just beginning to meet each other ; when 
 it was yet doubtful whether railways would super- 
 sede or only supplement stage-coaches; and when
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 6 
 
 the seniors, fliough they found themselves jostled 
 here and there by strange theories of life and dress 
 and government, did not suspect a revolution, and 
 were rather irritated than alarmed. 
 
 The change in our rural society which has taken 
 place since that time is nowhere so strongly marked 
 as it is in the characters of the clergy and the better 
 class of tenant-farmers. The squire has changed, 
 but not so much. What he may become in a few 
 years' time, it is hazardous to conjecture ; but at the 
 present moment the average English country gentle- 
 man of four or live thousand a-year is in all essen- 
 tial respects pretty nearly what he has been any 
 time since the accession of Queen Victoria. Of tlie 
 peasantry and smaller farmers the habits and ways of 
 thouoht are still in a state of transition. The begin- 
 uings of a great change are undoubtedly perceptible, 
 which in the course of another generation, when 
 board schools and agrarian agitation shall have done 
 their work, may complete that transformation in the 
 character of the peasantry which has taken place in 
 the classes just above them. But at present we 
 see only the germs, and there are still nooks and
 
 4 TIIK OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 corners to l)e found where we do not even see these. 
 But in the clergy the change is very marked ; and 
 it is in the country villages that it is most con- 
 spicuous and most significant, and most closely con- 
 nected with other great changes — moral, political, 
 and theological. 
 
 The distinctive peculiarity of the country par- 
 son of the old rigimc was that he was part of a 
 system. The village was a miniature of the State. 
 The three estates of the realm were represented hy 
 the parson, the farmers, and the labourers, and over 
 all was the squire. The little community was, 
 under the old parochial system, self-contained and 
 self-sufficing, with a life of its own, and with its 
 own traditions and idiosyncrasy. What the Church 
 was to the nation the parson was to the parish, and 
 this embodiment of Church and State in every vil- 
 lage in the kingdom represented with perfect fidelity 
 for nearly a century and a half the preponderant 
 public opinion of England. It expressed the Eev- 
 olution compromise, according with the national 
 repugnance to both Topery and l*uritanism, whicli 
 alone made the 1 {evolution a success. On the bar-
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 5 
 
 rier against both presented by the Established 
 Church of England, the nation leaned as on a rock. 
 The private lives of the clergy ; the zeal or the in- 
 dolence displayed l)y them in their special duties ; 
 the awakening or non-awakening character of their 
 Sunday discourses, — were trifles not worth a mo- 
 ment's consideration alongside of the great truth to 
 which the Church was a standing witness, and the 
 safety of the great fortress of which she was a 
 corner-stone. The shafts of Dissent, few and far 
 between as they were, glanced harmlessly off the 
 solid wall which the Church then presented to their 
 attacks. In fact, the position in which the clergy 
 lay intrenched was scarcely touched by them. Bolts 
 aimed at doctrine or discipline flew wide of the 
 mark, when doctrine and discipline had ceased to 
 interest society, and when the Church's strength lay 
 in her national character, and the double front which 
 she presented against the two extremes of bigotry 
 and cant, represented, however erroneously, to the 
 popular intelligence by Popery and Dissent. It was 
 an era in which her spiritual functions were, owing 
 to the force of circumstances, subordinated to her
 
 6 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 political and social ones. Two hundred years of rev- 
 olution, during which the nation had heen tossed to 
 and fro between the conflicting extremes of religious 
 intolerance, liad made it lieartily weary of both. A 
 decline of what is called spiritual activity, not of real 
 sober-minded piety, was the inevitable consequence 
 as soon as the combatants were exliausted. The 
 nation sank back, as it were, into a kind of religious 
 arm-chair, in which it slumbered peacefully till the 
 beginning of the present century. The Church of 
 England, therefore, not only represented tlie domi- 
 nant political opinion of the Georgian era, but also 
 the spirit of the age by which it was naturally ac- 
 companied — the comfortable easy way of taking 
 things into which the English people settled down 
 after the tumult of the Eeformation and the Revolu- 
 tion had subsided. Wesley and Whitfield produced 
 a great commotion ; but the mere fact that the 
 Church weathered it so easily, proves the truth of 
 what we say — namely, that the foundations upon 
 which she then rested were not touched by the 
 declamations of the Methodists. Nor did they 
 themselves wish to touch them. The Dissenters,
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 7 
 
 for many generations, shared in the popular convic- 
 tion that the existence of the Church of England as 
 then constituted was, upon the wliole, for the public 
 good. As Englishmen they saw wdiat their fellow- 
 countrymen saw in the Church of England. They 
 desired greater liberties for themselves, but years 
 went by before they were hostile to the Estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 It is easy to see that the clergy who were brought 
 up under this dispensation must have possessed a 
 quiet undoubting confidence in themselves and their 
 own position, which would give free play to all pecu- 
 liarities, and relieve them almost entirely from any 
 undue solicitude about public opinion. Such a 
 position in every walk of life has its advantages 
 and disadvantages. Virtual irresponsibility may 
 lead to neglect of duty, to abuse of power, to self- 
 ishness and self-indulgence. On the other hand, 
 freedom from restraint, and from the perpetual 
 haunting fear of what the world will say, tends 
 to make men more natural, more spontaneous, 
 and therefore more likely to be listened to, than 
 when they are less at their ease. In short, as a
 
 8 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 general rule, it makes the good better and the bad 
 worse: and so it was in the Church of England. 
 There were in those old days, it is but too true, 
 many very bad clergymen, to wliom what they 
 called " parsoning " was a simple bore, and who 
 excused, tliough they could not justify, the well- 
 known saying of Sydney Smith. But of the large 
 majority I believe that at least two -thirds were 
 beneficial members of society, doing a great deal of 
 good in their own way, and attaching the people to 
 the Church by as strong ties as any which exist 
 now. The other third were probably as active and 
 zealous parish priests as any to be found even in 
 these days of ecclesiastical revivals. 
 
 Of the country parson, who was indigenous to the 
 kind of soil I have described, there were, of course, 
 numerous varieties. Some, I think, are quite extinct. 
 Some linger still in sequestered situations. But 
 thirty or forty years ago there were many survivors 
 of the old breed — men born in the last century, who 
 were ordained and settled down in country livings 
 while Lord Liverpool was Prime JMinister, and who,
 
 THE COUNTRY CLEEGY. 9 
 
 though many of them had the sense to see that the 
 revival of 1833 was historically unassailable, never 
 took to it kindly, and seemed redolent to tlie last of 
 high pews, black gowns, bassoons, fiddles, and parish 
 clerks in top-boots. I myself, however, can recollect 
 an older specimen than even these — one who, born 
 before the death of Chatham, lived to see the death 
 of Palmerston, and carried far down into the second 
 half of the nineteenth century not only the habits 
 and opinions, but even the costume, of the age of 
 Pitt and Fox. He never had a pair of trousers in 
 his life ; and though it was to be gathered from his 
 conversation that he had some time in his dandy 
 days figured in boots and buckskins, my own im- 
 pression is that when 1 knew him he had never 
 worn a boot for forty years. In height he was about 
 five feet eight ; and was always dressed in a very 
 broad-skirted black tail-coat, coming well up into 
 the hollow of his head behind, a black single- 
 breasted waistcoat, black knee-breeches, shoes, and 
 gaiters. He wore no shirt-collar, but a voluminous 
 white neckerchief wound round his neck in soft
 
 10 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 thick folds, contrasting favourably with the tight 
 cravats and liigh " stick-ups " which were then in 
 vogue. On festive occasions he appeared, of course, 
 in black silks and silver buckles ; and I can recollect 
 him when a young man of sixty-five or so wearing the 
 tight black-silk pantaloons which are chielly known 
 to the present generation by the portrait of the late 
 Sir Robert Peel. He played a very good rubber, 
 and was a welcome guest at all the dinner-parties 
 in the neighbourhood, where he was treated with 
 great respect, and in his later years regarded with 
 much interest by those who met him for the first 
 time. He was fond of society, and well qualified to 
 shine in it, his natural gaiety and his old-fashioned 
 politeness mingling together very happily. But 
 much as he enjoyed himself abroad, it was in his 
 own home, in his own village, and among his own 
 people, that lie sought and found the good of life. 
 He knew no pleasanter hours than those which he 
 spent in a round of cottage visits, chatting with the 
 mothers and grandmothers of the hamlet at their 
 afternoon tea, observing traits of character, local
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 11 
 
 idioms, and specimens of rustic humour, wliicli it 
 was liis delight to retail in the evening to an ap- 
 preciative circle at tlie parsonage. 
 
 The cottagers in turn were equally glad to see 
 him, for, except in cases of illness, his conversation 
 was of a secular character ; and as he was skilled in 
 horticulture, and learned, as Dominie Sampson would 
 have said, in that which appertaineth unto swine 
 and poultry, he was aljle to give them useful hints 
 on these subjects, and sometimes left them wiser 
 than he found them — a result not always, perhaps, 
 attained by men of more spiritual zeal, who are fond 
 of improving all occasions. Not but what, if either 
 man or woman had been long absent from church, 
 without being able to assign a good reason for it, he 
 would administer a grave rebuke, all the more telling 
 from his habitual easy good-nature. It was seldom 
 that these visiting days did not result in one or 
 more plates making their appearance at the par- 
 sonage dinner-table, to be filled with slices from 
 the joint swimming in abundance of gravy, for 
 some invalid parishioner whose case required good
 
 12 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 living. On a summer evening lie delighted to stroll 
 down liis fields as far as the allotment-grounds whicli 
 lie had provided for the labourers out of his small 
 glebe, and inspect their crops or their tillage ; and 
 I can see him now in the hay-field, with his hands 
 in his pockets, and a benignant smile upon his coun- 
 tenance, as he exchanged jokes with the mowers or 
 the rakers — there were no machines then — who 
 might have had perhaps just a drop more beer 
 than would have been altogether good for them at 
 any other time than harvest, but who never forgot 
 themselves, even under the influence of malt, in 
 talking to tlie " parson," wlio, I don't suppose, ever 
 heard a rude word uttered in liis presence during 
 the whole fifty-six years that he reigned over that 
 little kingdom. He always dined with the village 
 club at their annual feast, and watched with delight 
 the rapid disappearance of the roast veal and batter 
 puddings, which were considered the prime dainties 
 on such occasions. IIi; did not disapprove of a 
 moderate hilarity, though lie retired before tlie 
 dancing began, only lingering long enough on uiie 
 occasion to Jiear, to liis lifelong amusement, a rustic
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 13 
 
 gallant assure a young lady of his acquaintance that 
 he " would kiss her if she wished it." 
 
 At home he found occupation in farming the few 
 acres of land which he kept in his own hands, in 
 pruning his apricot and apple trees, in keeping in 
 order the shady walks which he had formed in various 
 corners of his garden, in looking after the ducks, 
 guinea-fowls, and turkeys which thronged his little 
 farmyard, and in sometimes dragging the brook which 
 ran through his meadows, and yielded good pike, 
 eels, perch, and roach, which, as his sons grew up, 
 were reserved for angling purposes. He was no 
 sportsman, though very fond of natural history, and 
 a student of the habits of birds, who built at their 
 ease in the thick leafy covert which engirdled on 
 every side his own snug ivy-covered house. He 
 knew the eggs and the nests of every common bird 
 that Hew, and was always well pleased if his chil- 
 dren brought him specimens of the rarer kinds, or of 
 such as only haunted the more distant fields and 
 brook-sides. 
 
 In this round of simple amusements our country 
 parson passed his years, quite unaware that for six
 
 14 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 days of the week anything more couhl l)e required 
 of him, or that the days were coming when zealots 
 and bigots woukl 
 
 " Call his hanaless life a crime," 
 and the clergy would be summoned to exchange their 
 sickles and their pruning-knives for the weapons of 
 spiritual warfare, and their quiet game of whist and 
 their pleasant village gossip for the " serious prob- 
 lems of humanity," which, in the language of the 
 new school, are " everywhere calling for solution." 
 That day indeed came even to this good old gentle- 
 man before he was called from his earthly home to 
 a better one, where, let us hope, there are neither 
 schools nor school boards, neither conscience clauses 
 nor revised codes, and where payment for results 
 having been made once for all, we shall, we trust, 
 never hear of it again. 
 
 But our country parson always strove to do his 
 duty according to his lights, and when the new order 
 began to reveal itself, he made a manful effort to 
 respond to the appeal. This was hard work at eighty 
 years of age. He preached in his surplice, and had 
 service on saints' days, and restored his church, and
 
 THE COUNTRY CLEKGV. 15 
 
 while his strencfth lasted did what he could. But 
 neither he nor his people ever took kindly to the 
 new ways. His sermons were of the good old 
 style, inculcating the reality of Christianity, illus- 
 trating the doubts which might be thrown upon 
 it after the fashion of Archbishop Whately, and 
 insisting on the congregation believing in it as 
 they believed in the history of England ; which, 
 by the by, did not go much backwarder with 
 most of them than " Bony " and the battle of 
 Waterloo. He was a beautiful and most impres- 
 sive reader, thoroughly simple and unaffected, 
 but combining great earnestness with those natural 
 powers of elocution which no art can teach; and 
 which lent a charm to the liturgy and the lessons, 
 especially if taken from the Old Testament, such as 
 once experienced could never again be forgotten. 
 But when he tried to go beyond this he did not suc- 
 ceed. The people did not come to church on the 
 saints' days. " The band " took offence at the har- 
 monium ; and after all, I think the bad chanting of 
 a village choir was a poor exchange for the quiet 
 pathos with which the white-haired patriarch in the
 
 IG THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 twilight of a wintry afternoon used to repeat the 
 nunc me dimittas. AVhcn the summons came he 
 was in liis ninety-sixth year, and though it was long 
 since he had mingled in general society, it was felt 
 in the neighbourhood that one of its landmarks had 
 departed. " He was a great man among his people," 
 said the greatest English Churchman of our own 
 day, " and we shall have no more such in the Church 
 of England of the future." 
 
 But " the country parson as he was " comprehends 
 many other varieties, which have now however, for 
 the most part, disappeared likewise. There was, of 
 course, the hunting parson, as there is still, but who 
 differed from the hunting parson of to-day as Adam 
 before the fall differed from Adam after the fall. He 
 hunted, and thought no ill : he knew not that it was 
 wrong, or that anybody else knew it; whereas the 
 parson who hunts nowadays does it in more or less 
 of a defiant spirit, as a protest against " narrowness " 
 — all denoting the more combative controversial 
 stage into which we have now passed out of that 
 peaceful Arcadia of mutual toleration. But I think 
 the farming parson was a more decidedly special
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 17 
 
 product of the old school than the sporting one ; and 
 that very few clergymen are to be found nowadays 
 who farm in earnest on a large scale, and look to 
 their profits for a substantial part of their income. 
 There are in many parts of England, especially in 
 the midland counties, livings with very large glebes 
 attached to them, running from one hundred to six 
 or seven hundred acres. The parson sometimes took 
 the whole or a part of this into his own hands, and 
 toiled as hard in his vocation as any born and bred 
 agriculturist. He overlooked his men in the fields, 
 and occasionally took off his coat and helped them, 
 went to fairs and markets, bought and sold hard bar- 
 gains, and was as good a judge of a beast as " e'er a 
 farmer in the country." I can remember such a man 
 well. He was a short, stout, plethoric man, with legs 
 set on rather behind him, as some men's are, like a 
 cochin-china's ; and though active and robust, always 
 rather waddled in his walk. One peculiarity which 
 I think, however, he shared in common with all the 
 men of that leaven, was that he always wore his 
 clerical dress in whatever work he was enfjased ; 
 
 and he might be seen on a winter afternoon, just as 
 
 B
 
 18 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the teams got back from some outlying field, " serv- 
 ing " the pigs, or bringing fodder on a pitchfork to 
 the cattle in the farmyard, in a full suit of black not 
 very much the worse for wear. Nobody thought ill 
 of such a man for his mode of life : it detracted in 
 no way from the article of his spirituality. He went 
 everywhere like other clergymen ; and his daughters, 
 if he had any, would be refined and accomplished 
 ladies. Odd as it may seem, there was nothing of 
 the Trulliber about these men ; and what is perhaps 
 still odder, is the fact that, in the case of the one 
 whom I have more particularly in my eye, his ser- 
 mons were abstruse and casuistical, devoted to such 
 distinctions of interpretation and niceties of theol- 
 ogy as one certainly would not have expected from 
 his ordinary conversation and appearance. Perhaps 
 the one was necessary to neutralise the effect of the 
 other ; and the profound learning assumed in the 
 pulpit on Sunday was intended to restore the bal- 
 ance, which had been sadly weighed down during 
 the remainder of the week on the side of turnips, 
 tups, and oilcake. 
 
 Then there were the clerical " bucks " and diners-
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 19 
 
 out, whom I recollect still earlier in my boyhood. 
 Tlie comic curate, who came out to dinner in pale- 
 green kerseymere tights — a man of family, an accom- 
 plished dancer, and asked to all the great houses in 
 the county. Some of Miss Austen's clergymen, 
 though not guilty of such audacities of costume, 
 belonged, nevertheless, to the same type, and were 
 doubtless considered excellent parish clergymen in 
 their day. " How's your parson getting on ? " said 
 a country gentleman, who was somewhat of a 
 humourist, to a very worthy cow-doctor who lived 
 in a neighbouring ^•illage ; " he's rather a queer sort, 
 I understand." The parson in question was un- 
 happily addicted to liquor, and what Johnson calls 
 the lighter vices ; but the man was in arms in a 
 moment. " Queer, Sir Charles ! " he exclaimed ; 
 " he's a most respectable man, barring his char- 
 acter ! " Sir Charles told this story to his dying day 
 with increased enjoyment of it every time. It was 
 clear that in the man's eyes the parson was an insti- 
 tution. If his private character was bad, it was to 
 be regretted; but it did not affect his position if 
 his public duties were respectably performed.
 
 20 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 Then tliere was the pleasant, middle-aged, free and 
 easy, very gentlemanly parson, who was not perhaps 
 much of a sportsman, tliongh he might fish or shoot 
 a little now and then, hut was eminently the man of 
 society, told the best and newest stories, joked with 
 the young ladies, talked like a London clubman to 
 their fathers and their brothers, affected the cliar- 
 acter of a thorough " man of the world," and dressed 
 as little like a clergyman as he could. l>efore the 
 rural conscience was awakened from its long sleep, 
 such men were great favourites in society. They 
 were often men of some little culture, fair scholars, 
 and generally well informed. But they agreed vvitli 
 all the other varieties I have mentioned in the one 
 common characteristic, that they did not consider 
 their profession to entail on them of necessity any- 
 thing in the shape of a distinctly non-secular char- 
 acter. They were part of the county society, be- 
 longing to a profession requiring the performance of 
 duties more than ordinarily grave and serious, but 
 when these were done not demanding of them any 
 very difierent life from that of their neighbours. 
 They were part of a great system, and that carried
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 21 
 
 it off. Of course it is not meant that this concep- 
 tion was nniversal. Evangelicalism, in fact, was a 
 standing protest against it. But Evangelicalism 
 abode chiefly in the towns, and never laid any hold 
 of the country people, whose minds are not the kind 
 of soil in which emotional religion takes root. Eor 
 all that Evangelicalism could have done in the 
 majority of English villages, the country parson as 
 he was might have gone on playing his rubber, 
 farming his glebe, feeding his pigs, shooting his 
 partridges, and taking an active part in country 
 business to the day of judgment. 
 
 The old-fashioned parson and the old-fashioned 
 peasant were thoroughly in harmony with each 
 other. They looked upon Dissenters as Cobbett 
 looked upon them. Church-goers saw no harm in 
 attending " chapel " on Sunday evening, provided 
 they had been to church in the morning; and the 
 parson saw little harm in it either. The leading Dis- 
 senter in the village — a cantankerous man, too — used 
 to say of the first old gentleman I have described that 
 he was " a true Christian." A shoemaker in the same 
 parish, of a figurative turn of mind, declared that
 
 22 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 there was " such a mess o' wickedness in the world 
 that men wanted more than one hoss to pull them 
 through it." Now and then the Dissenters, under 
 the old regime, would he supposed to forget them- 
 selves, and cany their heads a little too liigh, as 
 when they asked the parish clerk to tea — a liberty 
 wliich he indignantly resented. Ihit on the whole, 
 the religious life of the village in those good old 
 days Jlplv eXOelv vta<i k")(aiwv glided smoothly along. 
 The parson was accepted as part of the constitution 
 — a country gentleman, a magistrate charged with 
 civil as well as with religious functions, and sharing 
 with the squire the duty of keeping order within a 
 given district. As long as this conception lasted, 
 so long was his position impregnable. The Non- 
 conformist theory did not seriously affect it — indeed, 
 scarcely touched it. The two did not meet upon 
 the same ground. It was impossible that the work 
 of the clergy as understood at that time could have 
 been performed by any voluntary society. But in 
 proportion as the clergy have lost their blended 
 character, and come to rely more exclusively on 
 their theological title to obedience, so far have they
 
 THE COUNTEY CLERGY. 23 
 
 quitted their vantage-ground, and descended to an 
 arena where Dissent can meet them upon something 
 like equal terms. That they have gained much in 
 exchange for what they have lost I should be the 
 last to deny. But of that hereafter. 
 
 The old system wore itself out at last. Thanks 
 to the vigour and patriotism of the English aris- 
 tocracy, the revolutionary elements which existed 
 in England, as they must exist in all old countries, 
 did not catch fire from the French ; and we escaped 
 all violent disturbance. But we could not escape 
 altogether. Privilege became unpopular. The 
 Dissenters gathered strength and purpose. The 
 repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts — and 
 more, far more, the repeal of Eoman Catholic 
 disabilities ; the Keform Bill, and the legislation 
 which followed it; the new Poor Law and the 
 Municipal Corporation Acts, — effected in the course 
 of seven years a complete change in the position 
 of the country parson, though its full effects were 
 of course not recognised at once, and men of the old 
 school went on as before, and the existing genera- 
 tion continued to think of them as before, long after
 
 24 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the ancient regime had received its mortal wound. 
 But this was not all. 
 
 There were men in the Church of England at that 
 time who clearly understood what had happened 
 between 1828 and 1833, and what was likely to 
 follow, if something was not done. At that time, 
 says Cardinal Newman, " I hated Liberalism." The 
 triumph of Liberalism was to him like the triumph 
 of Antichrist. And he and his friends set to work 
 to arm the Church of England at all events for the 
 coming struggle, and to find her a new, and, as they 
 hoped, a stronger position instead of the one which 
 she had lost, or was about to lose. It is no part of 
 the design of this paper to discuss either the pro- 
 gress, the character, or the wisdom of the great 
 Oxford revival. I believe it was, from a Church- 
 man's point of view, a necessity of the period. But 
 along with the vast amount of practical good which 
 it undoubtedly accomplished, it certainly had this 
 result also, that it damped the loyalty of the middle 
 classes towards the Church of England. These were, 
 and still are, rigidly Protestant. They had been 
 shocked l»y Eomau Catholic emancipation, and the
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 25 
 
 proof of the Church ©f England's weakness which 
 it seemed to afibrd. Still they would have allowed, 
 perhaps, that so far the Church had done her best. 
 She had fought the old battle over again to the 
 best of her ability, and though her strength was 
 not equal to the defence of the fortress intrusted 
 to her, she had not betrayed it. But when Tracta- 
 rianism made its appearance their horror knew no 
 bounds. The Church, they thought, had voluntarily 
 abdicated the position which alone gave her a right 
 to their allegiance, and had gone over to the enemy. 
 To understand the Anglican revival required, as Mr 
 Cassilis said of Young England, " a doosid deal of 
 history and all that sort of thing ; " and of that 
 sort of thing the middle classes were as innocent 
 as Mr Cassilis himself. 
 
 The movement has had great success in reclaim- 
 ing the masses of the working population, but it 
 weakened the position of the country parson. The 
 farmers and small tradesmen were almost to a man 
 against it ; and of course when the parson laid claim 
 to higher spiritual prerogatives, his personal quali- 
 fications and his daily life and conversation were
 
 26 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 subjected to closer scrutiny. What the Tracts had 
 done to loosen the relation between the parson and 
 the farmer, the new Poor Law did to loosen the 
 relation between the parson and the peasantry. Of 
 this I feel more sure than of anything else which 
 I have said in tliis chapter. I am old enough to 
 remember as a child the way in which the labourers 
 talked of the " Bastille." The substitution of a 
 Union Board of Guardians for the ancient paro- 
 chial organisation severed the old bond between 
 the labourers and the landowners, whether lay or 
 clerical, and, together with the new Ritual, has 
 been one of the chief instruments of change in 
 the position of the country clergy. 
 
 The country parson, as he is, presents as many 
 varieties to the eye of the philosopher as his less 
 active but more comfortable predecessor. There 
 are among them, of course, " survivals," anachron- 
 isms, who, if they had lived sixty years ago, would 
 have been more in their place. But these are few 
 and far between. There are, as I have said, sport- 
 ing parsons now as ever; but tlic parson who 
 hunts nowadays, in the spirit of muscular Christi-
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 27 
 
 aiiity — who hunts as Kingsley hunted, not only 
 because he likes it, but to show that a clergyman 
 has as good a right to hunt as any other man, 
 and as a protest against asceticism, sacerdotalism, 
 and modern exaltation of the hierarchic 7]6o<i, in 
 general — is wide asunder as the poles from the 
 sporting parson of yore, innocent of all moral pur- 
 pose, and hunting if he liked it, just as he got up 
 or went to bed, without its even entering into his head 
 that there could be two opinions on the subject. 
 But the great point which the body of English 
 country clergy of to-day seem to possess in com- 
 mon is, that they feel less strongly than they did 
 that they are part of one great national system, and 
 more strongly than they did that their position in 
 the country depends exclusively on their personal 
 efficiency. At first sight perhaps everybody might 
 be inclined to cry out. And so much the better I 
 But this I take leave to doubt. The proof of the 
 pudding is in the eating, and if we take an aver- 
 age agricultural village of the present day, and com- 
 pare it with what we can remember thirty years 
 ago, shall we find that marked improvement in the
 
 28 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 mainiers and morals of tho people which would be 
 the best proof of the assertion ? The moral influ- 
 ence of the Church of England, as a divine insti- 
 tution which was part also of the law of the land, 
 and had the same claim on your obedience as the 
 sovereign, the magistrate, and the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, was quite equal, I think, to the effect which 
 is produced by the increased individual activity of 
 the parochial clergy. However this may be, that 
 is certainly the distinction between the two epochs. 
 The modern country parson is — not always, for there 
 is not the same homogeneity about the class as 
 formerly, but, generally speaking — always "on the 
 go." He has penny readings, harvest-home festivals 
 with a church service, lectures, entertainments with- 
 out number. He strives most earnestly and labori- 
 ously to identify himself with the amusements of 
 the people, as well as with their more serious con- 
 cerns, and to show them that the Church is every- 
 where, and has as much sympathy with the joyous 
 humanities of our nature as with its spiritual wants 
 and troubles. All this is excellent. Only under 
 the old r(^gimc it was taken for granted. Now the
 
 THE COUNTKY CLERGY. 29 
 
 parson's life is one long effort. He is always to be 
 seen in his long single-breasted coat and slouched 
 billycock hat, hurrying at a half-run from one end 
 of the village to the other, intent upon some new 
 scheme for what is called " interesting the people." 
 In a healthier state of things they did not stand 
 in need of being interested. The laisscz-fairc prin- 
 ciple is altogether banished from among the modern 
 country clergy ; and the difference between old and 
 new is specially emphasised in their attitude towards 
 Dissenters. 
 
 The country parson, as he was, looked on them 
 simply as one of the minor troubles of life, of 
 which, as no one could hope altogether to escape 
 them, it behoved a sensible man to make the best. 
 His way was to take no notice of them ; to assume 
 that they were all Churchmen, as by law they were, 
 and to visit them and talk to them just exactly as 
 he would have done to any other of his parishioners. 
 This, I am afraid, the country parson of to-day finds 
 to be almost impossible. The parson who was not 
 only the clergyman but a good deal more besides, 
 could do this ; and in remote parts of England,
 
 30 TIIK ULU AND THE NEW, 
 
 where Dissenters who never enter tlie church door 
 still seek the clergyman's advice in all temporal 
 difficulties, he can do so still. But these are ex- 
 ceptional cases. The Dissenting minister now con- 
 siders himself and the parson to represent two rival 
 Churches, and the old relationshii) hetween them 
 has been destroyed by the Dissenters themselves, 
 even if the clergy had been anxious to preserve 
 it. They now, however, seem to adopt one of two 
 extremes in their dealings with Dissenters : either 
 they live in constant suspicion and apprehension 
 of them, tracking them from cottage to cottage, 
 and labouring to counteract the poison which they 
 have administered to each in succession — battling 
 against them, preaching against them, thinking about 
 them every hour of the day ; or else they court 
 them, try to make much of them, profess to be- 
 lieve that there are no essential diflerences between 
 orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and go out of their way 
 to pay them compliments and flatter them at every 
 possible opportunity. If these clergymen suppose 
 that Dissenters are really conciliated by this mode 
 of treatment, they are very much deceived. If the
 
 THE COUNTKY CLEKGY. 31 
 
 difference between them were still, as it used to l)e, 
 one only of doctrine and Church government, it 
 might have that effect ; but the difference now is 
 social and political, and anything like " patronising " 
 on the part of the clergy is silently, if not openly, 
 resented. I hardly know which of the two above 
 modes of dealing with ISTonconformists is the more 
 impolitic. The first is of course set down to in- 
 corrigible bigotry ; the second to something very like 
 fear. Yet so many things have occurred within 
 even the last quarter of a century to alter the posi- 
 tion of the Church of England both in town and 
 country, that, as I have already said, the older re- 
 lations between the clergy and Nonconformity are 
 practically irrecoverable. These were based on a 
 tacit recognition by Dissenters of the Church's 
 national position, and acquiescence in her social 
 superiority. But these are just the points which 
 are now disputed ; and it places the clergy, it must 
 be owned, in a position of much greater difficulty 
 than the one which they occupied when the present 
 century was young. 
 
 I cannot too often repeat that these observations
 
 32 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 consist of little more than "random recollections," 
 and by no means profess to give an exlianstive 
 account of either the old or the new school. They 
 are general impressions, which I do not think 
 however, will be pronounced substantially in- 
 accurate by any one who lias used his opportunities 
 of observation. Human nature is human nature 
 still ; and in many respects the change in the 
 country clergy is only in externals. Among the 
 younger men, youth and its pleasures will still ex- 
 tort recognition ; and though in our large towns 
 there are many almost fresh from college who will 
 deny themselves every amusement natural to their 
 age that they may pursue with uninterrupted energy 
 the work to which they have devoted themselves, 
 there are others in the country where less self-sacri- 
 fice is demanded, who still, under different condi- 
 tions, and allowing a much larger share of their time 
 for parish duties, live very much the old life. Some, 
 as we have seen, hunt and shoot : and the Tilneys 
 and Eltons, the dancing and dining-out clergy of 
 Miss Austen's novels, reappear in the lawn-tennis 
 players and garden-party frequenters of the present
 
 THE COUNTRY CLERGY. 33 
 
 day. Young ladies and young clergymen will find 
 each other out as of old, if not in the ball-room, 
 then in some other place which the world thinks 
 proper for the time being to regard as more suit- 
 able for Churchmen. 
 
 Some clergymen of the new school take a delight, 
 as some clergymen of the old school did, though 
 from a wholly different motive, in dressing like 
 laymen — always wearing black ties and coloured 
 trousers, even in London. Some do this on grounds 
 decidedly broad ; others, perhaps for prudential rea- 
 sons, from the fear of giving offence to sceptics by 
 too ostentatious a display of "the cloth," which 
 might possibly, they think, be construed as a menace ; 
 on the same principle, we suppose, which made the 
 Duke of Wellington unfavourable to the display of 
 military uniforms in the streets. 
 
 No sketch of the country parson as he was and as 
 he is might perhaps be thought complete without ref- 
 erence to the rise and progress of ritualism. But 
 it would be difficult to add much on this head to 
 what I have already written without getting into 
 
 c
 
 34 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 deeper waters than would consort with the character 
 of this chapter. I think that some part at least of 
 what the Church has gained by ritualism in the 
 towns she has lost in the counties ; and that the 
 farmer and peasantry preferred, and would prefer 
 still, the parson of the old type. " It's not the 
 likes of you, sir," said the village carrier to an 
 elderly parson of his acquaintance, who was the best 
 shot in the county, and sometimes made one at a 
 pigeon-match — " it's not the likes of you as does any 
 harm in the Church ; it's them young pups," jerking 
 his thumb as he spoke in the direction of a neigh- 
 bouring churcli where a young curate had recently 
 raised the banner of ritualism. I am afraid that in 
 this elegant criticism there was a large element of 
 truth ; but I do not believe, at the same time, that 
 the mischief is serious. The Church of England is 
 just now in a transition state — always a period of 
 some weakness and danger — but I see no reason to 
 doubt that she will emerge from it with safety, and, 
 it may be, stronger than ever. In calling attention 
 to some of the salient characteristics of the era she 
 is leaving behind her, and some of the peculiarities
 
 THE COUNTRY CLEIIGY. 35 
 
 of the stage through which she is passing, I had no 
 intention of judging between them, still less of pre- 
 suming to say anytliing in serious condemnation of a 
 movement wliich, if it has made the Church some 
 enemies, has, I believe, made her still more friends, 
 and wliich, at all events, had fifty years ago become 
 almost unavoidable.
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 
 
 "TTTHEN Sir Eobert Peel told his party that he 
 would rather be the leader of the country 
 gentlemen of England than enjoy the confidence of 
 princes, he was probably quite sincere. It was 
 not merely because he was the leader of tlie Tory 
 party that he was tlie leader of the country 
 gentlemen of England. Mr l*itt had been the 
 leader of the Tory party, yet it would liardly 
 have been correct to describe Pitt as the leader of 
 the English gentry. He was that and a great deal 
 more. In the lifetime of Mr I'itt the })osition of 
 the gentry was unchallenged. Their local and 
 political authority, their administrative functions, 
 their social relations with their tenantry and the
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 37 
 
 peasantry on their estates, were untouched, and 
 they stood in need of no championship beyond 
 what was equally extended the whole constitu- 
 tion of the country. But after 1832, when our 
 old territorial system received its first stab, the 
 country gentlemen must have soon begun to feel 
 that their own order was specially singled out 
 for attack. The aristocracy, the great nobles with 
 their thirty and forty thousand a-year, who moved 
 in a wider orbit, and stood upon loftier eminences, 
 and whose combined wealth and birth necessarily 
 o-ave them an advantage over the claims of wealth 
 alone — these for the present were secure. But the 
 country gentlemen, the knightly order, whose im- 
 portance depended on their local power, and the 
 influence which they derived from the exercise of 
 immemorial authority among their rural neighbours, 
 were more immediately affected by the great 
 democratic wave. The new Poor Law struck a 
 blow at the old parochial system and those who 
 administered it, which was not dictated solely by 
 economic reasons, and it is now very commonly 
 believed that the repeal of the Act of 1796
 
 38 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 would have done all that was necessary at the 
 time. The I'oor Law was followed up hy the 
 agitation against the Corn Laws, avowedly con- 
 ducted hy its prime leader and instigator for the 
 purpose of changing the aristocracies, and placing 
 the mercantile in the place of the patrician order. 
 The nobility were divided against themselves. But ' 
 the country gentlemen found it necessary to draw 
 together, and from tliat time dates what may be 
 called the consolidated Toryism of the whole un- 
 titled aristocracy. 
 
 It was about this time that Sir Kobert I'eel made 
 the memorable declaration to which we have re- 
 ferred; and if he had any sentiment in his com- 
 position, it may well have been evoked in favour 
 of a class of men whose generous traditions and 
 romantic history appeal so strongly to the imagina- 
 tion ; which forms a link of such inestimable value 
 in our social system ; and of which he himself was, 
 if a recent, at least a most distinguished, ornament. 
 "Wliat might have happened had Sir Eobert Peel 
 and the country gentlemen never quarrelled, is a 
 question which is often asked. AVhether tlie pro-
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 39 
 
 longation of his life as the head of the Conser- 
 vative party for another ten years would have 
 permanently affected the course of events, and 
 have appreciably diminished the force of that 
 hostile blast which has been beating against 
 his former friends ever since his death, it is im- 
 possible to say. All we have to remember now is, 
 that the great nineteenth-century Minister, the man 
 whom so many good Liberals believe to have been 
 the greatest English Minister since Pitt, thought in 
 such and such a manner of the country gentlemen 
 of England ; that he preferred their allegiance to 
 the confidence of princes ; and that to be their 
 leader — not the leader of the Tory party, or the 
 leader of the middle classes, but the leader of the 
 English rural proprietors — was the proudest posi- 
 tion he could occupy. 
 
 This is one testimony to the character of the 
 English country gentleman. Another may be 
 quoted from Sir Eobert Peel's favourite pupil, 
 Mr Gladstone. Speaking on the Irish Land Bill, 
 on the 17th of February 1870, Mr Gladstone 
 said : —
 
 40 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 •x 
 
 "In Ireland, from the unhapjiy rdrcumstanccs of the 
 country, . . . there has not rested in tlie hands of 
 the landlords the discharge of that immense mass of 
 imblic duties, bearing upon every subject of political, 
 social, and moral interest, without fee or reward, which 
 has honourably distinguished for so many generations the 
 landlords of England. This fixed and happy usage I 
 take to be a just relic and true descendant of the feudal 
 system, which never took a real or genuine root in Ire- 
 land. . . . Are you i)re})ared to denude them (the 
 Irish landlords) of their interest in the land 1 and, what 
 is more, are you prepared to absolve them from their 
 duties with regard to the land ? I, for one, confess that 
 I am not ; nor is that the sentiment of my colleagues. 
 "We think, on the contrary, that we ought to look forward 
 with hope and expectation to bringing about a state of 
 things in which the landlords of Ireland may assume, or 
 may more generally assume, the position Avhich is hai)})ily 
 held, as a class, by landlords in this country : a position 
 marked by residence, by personal familiarity, and by 
 sympathy with the people among whom they live ; by 
 long traditional connection handed on from generation to 
 generation, and marked by constant discharge of duty in 
 every form that can be suggested — be it as to the adminis- 
 tration of justice, be it as to the defence of the country, 
 be it as to the supply of social, or spiritual, or moral, or 
 educational wants, be it for any pur])0se whatever that is 
 recognised as good or beneficial in a civilised society."
 
 THE COUNTllY GENTLEMEN. 41 
 
 Since Sir liobert Peel Wcas tlie leader of the 
 country gentlemen of England, and since Mr Glad- 
 stone paid this well-deserved tribute to their ser- 
 vices, many tilings have happened to impair their 
 influence and their authority. But while they are 
 still spared to us, let us take a glance at them as 
 they now are, bating perhaps some slight change 
 in their position brought about by agricultural de- 
 pression ; and consider very briefly how they stand 
 affected by recent legislation, which it is thought 
 by some will be their ruin. 
 
 There are, of course, several degrees of country 
 gentlemen, as regards both fortune and family. I 
 am using the present tense, because I am writing 
 on the hypothesis that the losses they have en- 
 dured from agricultural depression are not irre- 
 parable, and they may yet again be, if not all 
 they once were, sufficiently like the present picture 
 to make no alteration necessary. There are men 
 with more than ten thousand a-year, and men with 
 less than three. And between these two comes the 
 largest class of all — those who can, or till lately 
 could, afford to keep up large establishments in
 
 42 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the country, with extensive gardens and pleasure- 
 grounds, with six or seven hunters in their stables, 
 and plenty of pheasants in their covers ; hut who 
 du not regularly come to Lond(jn for the season, 
 or form a part of the fashionable world. They 
 diher among themselves in point of birth, even 
 more widely than in point of fortune. There is 
 the squire or the baronet whose ancestor came in 
 with the Conqueror, and there is the squire or 
 the baronet whose grandfather was in trade, and 
 who " bought out " some impoverished descendant 
 of the Cavaliers. The )ioui homines are, as might 
 be expected, numerous. But in England generally, 
 the majority of the " county families " can boast 
 of a respectable antiquity, reaching back, at all 
 events, to Naseby and Edgehill, if not to Agin- 
 court and IJannockburn. They are often, of course, 
 the lineal descendants of the gentlemen who, under 
 the Edwards and the Henrys, were the holders of 
 kiiights' fees, and formed the flower of the feudal 
 armies. As the tall barons were cut down by 
 the Wars of the Eoses, the kniglits whom they 
 had overshadowed assumed a more prominent posi-
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 43 
 
 tion, and became tlic founders of that order of 
 country gentlemen which is often said to date from 
 Queen Elizabeth. In process of time there came 
 to be no distinction between the squires, or gentle- 
 men who liad not been knighted, and those who 
 had ; and after the institution of the order of 
 baronets, knighthood lost its ancient military char- 
 acter and feudal meaning, and became gradually 
 what it is at present. 
 
 Another source from which the order of country 
 gentlemen was largely recruited lay in the numerous 
 class of landowners who were not gentlemen of 
 coat-armour at all, or even designated as squires. 
 These were the " crestless yeomen " of Shakespeare ; 
 and it seems probable that between the accession 
 of Henry VII. and the accession of Charles I., 
 many of this class had acquired sufficient property 
 and hnportauce to become absorbed into the ranks 
 of the gentry, and some of them, we fancy, held 
 positions of high trust and authority among the 
 English Cavaliers. 
 
 Of the estates of the Church confiscated at the 
 Eeformation, a considerable share, no doubt, passed
 
 44 THE OLD AXl) THE NEW. 
 
 into the liands of the gentry, and in some cases 
 the property so acqnired formed the basis on 
 which new families were reared. By tlie disso- 
 lution of tlie monasteries, the lesser aristocracy, 
 as well as the greater, was both extended and 
 enriclied. 
 
 The fourth tributary which has gone to feed the 
 main stream is, as we have already mentioned, 
 composed of successful traders, merchants, and pro- 
 fessional men, who made fortunes and bouoht estates 
 as they do now, and became after a generation or 
 two as good country gentlemen as the JMusgraves, 
 the Knightleys, and the Bedingfields. 
 
 But whatever diherences of birth or fortune may 
 exist among themselves, the country gentlemen as 
 a body agree in all essential particulars, receive 
 the same education and breeding, possess the same 
 tastes and habits, and to a certain extent exhibit 
 much similarity of character. The boys go to 
 Eton or some other of our leading public schools. 
 In the holidays they learn to ride and shoot, and 
 as soon as they can knock over eleven rabbits out 
 of twelve, and jump their ponies over anything
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 45 
 
 their own size, they are entered with the partridges, 
 and make their appearance with the hounds. Dur- 
 ing their novitiate tliey make acquaintance with 
 tlie farmers and their sons, who think it a great 
 day when the young squire, at eleven or twelve 
 years of age, first comes out coursing on his 
 Shetland pony, wliich any one of them is proud 
 to lift over the gaps, rider and all, though the 
 little gentleman's dignity sometimes suffers in the 
 process. In the summer evenings he plays cricket 
 with the village club ; and in these various ways 
 becomes familiarly known to both the tenants and 
 the labourers in the immediate vicinity of the 
 Hall. He thus acquires an insight into the char- 
 acter of the whole class, and a knowledge of their 
 wants, wishes, and prejudices, which can be ob- 
 tained by no other kind of teaching. He comes 
 to understand their language, and their peculiar 
 modes of expressing themselves. He grows up in 
 real sympathy with them ; and in after - life his 
 charities and his benignities lose all the eleemosy- 
 nary or patronising element svhich is sometimes im- 
 puted to such favours, in the savour of personal
 
 46 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 affection and " auld lang syne " wliicli still clings 
 to them. 
 
 If the heir does not go abroad with his regiment, 
 he probably travels a year or two after leaving 
 college, and comes back to the old home to find 
 his boyish friends sprung up into stalwart young 
 farmers setting up in life for themselves, but still 
 lookino- forward to settle where their fathers and 
 forefathers have dwelt so long, at the first con- 
 venient opportunity. No sophistry can convince 
 us that the relations so established between the 
 owners and cultivators of the soil are not far more 
 conducive to the public good than any which can 
 possibly exist between capital and labour in our 
 great cities. They prevent the irritation which is 
 elsewhere excited by strong social contrasts un- 
 relieved by the mellowing influences of hereditary 
 connection and early personal intercourse ; and they 
 show the rich and the poor, the hjrd and the 
 tenant, the superior and the inferior, living side 
 by side, not only without any of the friction which 
 the juxtaposition generates elsewhere, but in a 
 condition of great social contentment, in which the
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 47 
 
 virtues of loyalty and respect on one side, and 
 liberality, confidence, and kindness on the other, 
 grow naturally and flourish, till the lladical dema- 
 gogue appears, like the wild boar out of the woods, 
 to root them up. We say that the spectacle pre- 
 sented by a well-ordered English village, with a 
 resident squire and clergyman, such as was all but 
 universal thirty years ago, and is still rather the 
 rule than the exception, is the best rebuke to 
 agrarian agitation and Cockney ignorance that can 
 possibly be administered. 
 
 A glance at the country gentleman at home, and 
 his relations with his poorer neighbours, incline one 
 to believe, in spite of the odds which seem to be 
 against him in the approaching struggle for power 
 and authority in the counties, that the peasantry 
 may still be true to their traditions, and that even 
 where sentiment fails, self-interest may teach them 
 the wisdom of keeping the country gentlemen where 
 they are, and doing nothing to disgust them with 
 country life, or drive them away from their estates. 
 
 Take the Hall, or the House, or the Park in any 
 English county where agricultural depression has
 
 48 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 not yet done its dismal work, and a walk tliroiigh 
 the gardens, tlie plantations, the stable-yard, and 
 the out-buildinu's will show to what an extent it 
 contributes to the employment of labour in the 
 neighbourhood. The head-gardener must have his 
 three or four assistants in the kitchen-garden, and 
 as many more in the pleasure-grounds, — men who 
 live in the adjoining village, and are employed 
 all the year round at good wages. In the woods 
 and plantings trees are being felled, underwood 
 thinned, and fagots tied up. In the stables we 
 find five or six hunters, besides hacks and carriage- 
 horses, requiring the services of helpers, stable- 
 boys, and blacksmiths, in addition to the regular 
 grooms and coachman who live on the premises. 
 Behind the stable-yard is the sawpit and the car- 
 penter's shop, affording regular work to another 
 group of the village population. The wives and 
 daughters of these men will often be engaged by 
 the housekeepers as laundry -women and needle- 
 women. Take it all in all, will any practical man 
 who knows what he is talking about pretend to 
 say for one moment that the same amount of
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 49 
 
 work, with the same degree of regularity, would 
 be forthcoming for tlic peasantry and their families 
 if the Hall were converted into a farmhouse, and 
 the gardens and pleasure-grounds turned into grass 
 or turnip fields ? The notion is alDSurd. 
 
 We have taken the very lowest estimate of the 
 number of men likely to be employed about the 
 house of a country gentleman of moderate fortune. 
 One who had a real, and not merely a nominal, 
 income of nine or ten thousand a-year, would em- 
 ploy nearer double. But the stimulus to labour 
 supplied hj the House or the Hall does not end 
 here. It extends to the neighbouring towns, where 
 saddlers, cutlers, ironmongers, builders, brewers, and 
 many other tradesmen would have to turn off' half 
 their hands if the country were emptied of all the 
 squires and baronets who now occupy the manor- 
 houses, and in well-known provincial phrase, " keep 
 up the county." It is true, unfortunately, that " pro- 
 gress" has made great inroads upon the influence 
 once exercised by the gentry in the class of towns 
 above referred to. Before the days of railroads and 
 stores the local aristocracy were among the best 
 
 D
 
 50 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 customers and patrons of the local tradesmen. On 
 market-day the streets and inn-yards were full of 
 carriages, bearing on their panels many an honoured 
 crest and coat-of-arms. The shops were thronged 
 with ladies whose household supplies were drawn 
 exclusively from the linendrapers, grocers, and 
 chandlers of their own county. The gentlemen, 
 and very often the ladies too, lunclied at the Bell, 
 or the George, or the Swan : the smiling and pros- 
 perous landlord — there were no managers or com- 
 panies then — standing in the porch to receive them 
 with dutiful bow and frank civility, knowing them to 
 be the mainstay of his fortunes. Those were the days 
 of posting; and in the full tide of county gaieties, 
 where distances were too great for a gentleman's 
 own horses, the postboys were in regular demand, 
 and another source of constant profit to the inn- 
 keepers. Now all this is changed. The ladies 
 deal with the stores, and the gentlemen go in 
 to their magisterial business by railway. W]iere 
 twenty or forty pair of post - horses were kept 
 sixty years ago, not more than two or three remain, 
 and often not so many as that. The well-known
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEX. 51 
 
 equipages which had travelled the same road and 
 stopped at the same houses for years, liave vanished, 
 and that tie, at all events, between the upper and 
 middle classes, is now broken. If tlie Duke (if 
 AVellington really did say, when first he saw a 
 train in motion, " There goes tlie English aristoc- 
 racy," the sentiment, though exaggerated — as such 
 ohitcr dicta generally are — did not altogether belie 
 his proverbial sagacity. 
 
 If we think of the time when these words were 
 uttered, we are carried back to a condition of society 
 in which the government of the country by the 
 landed interest still seemed to be in harmony with 
 the constitution of things ; and for a quarter of 
 a century afterwards nooks and corners might 
 be found, as perhaps they may be now, in which 
 the feudal feeling still lingered, and the lord of 
 the soil was an object of as deep reverence as 
 Sir Everard Waverley or Sir Christopher Cheveril. 
 One such we can remember ourselves. He was 
 the head of a very ancient family originally settled 
 in the north of England, and transplanted to one 
 of the midland counties in the fourteenth century,
 
 52 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 where they had held the same estate in an un- 
 hroken line from father to son ever since. His 
 property was in an exclusively agricultural and 
 pastoral district, and must have been ten or twelve 
 miles distant from any place that could be called 
 a town. There was no other resident proprietor 
 in the neighbourhood, and here he reigned supreme. 
 He was a tall and very handsome man, with fine 
 open features and curly auburn hair, the very model 
 of a modern aristocrat as drawn l)y Mr Matthew 
 Arnold, in whom, though light is not deficient, 
 sweetness is the predominant characteristic. His 
 dependants had all the benefit of this latter quality, 
 and assuredly did not miss the former. The little 
 grey village church lay close to tlie Hall, and the 
 avenue by which Sir llichard and his beautiful wife 
 and children walked down to it was visible from 
 the porch. The parish clerk, when we knew him, 
 had held that office more than a dozen years, but 
 he still trembled at the great man's approach. 
 " He's coming," he would inform the curate in an 
 agitated whisper, as he discerned the stately figure 
 of the baronet advancing slowly through the trees,
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 53 
 
 and then Inirry off to ring the congregation in — a 
 ceremony always deferred till the appearance of 
 Sir liichard gave the signal for it. 
 
 The tenants and labourers on this gentleman's 
 estate would probably in those days have done any- 
 thing he told them to do. But he never abused his 
 power over them, was, though poor, an indulgent 
 landlord, and, what perhaps w'as the great secret 
 of all, lived and died among his people. All his 
 pleasures, all his cares, all his ambition w^ere centred 
 in that one spot ; and he never left it from one 
 year's end to another. Such a man as this had no 
 difficulties, and would have none now, about game- 
 preserving or hunting, or any of the privileges or 
 amusements of his order, which his tenantry were 
 glad that he should enjoy, and did their utmost to 
 promote. In the eighteenth century, and during the 
 first quarter of the nineteenth, such as this man was, 
 the bulk of the English gentry were. And such, in 
 the opinion of some competent judges, they might 
 again become would they only return to simpler 
 habits, live entirely on their estates, and for weal 
 or for woe throw in their lot with their dependants.
 
 54 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 TliG only reinark to be made (jii lliis view of the 
 case is, that the gentry are doing so already under 
 the force of circiinistances ; and hence, after all, 
 may ensue the very curious result that the agri- 
 cultural depression, which threatened at one time 
 to estrange the tenantry from the landlords, may 
 only end by bring them closer together. 
 
 " Thougli much is taken, much remains ; " 
 
 and if the English gentry are not all they once 
 were, they may, nevertheless, be strong enough to 
 keep what they have got, and the very con- 
 siderable share of power, respect, and popularity 
 which still remains to them. We must all wish 
 that it should be so, except those to whom the 
 word "gentleman" is hateful. It is surely for 
 the public interest that, scattered all over the 
 country, should be little centres of culture, refine- 
 ment, and the gentleness that comes of gentle birth ; 
 that there should be a class of proprietors in whose 
 hands property assumes a less invidious aspect than 
 it wears in large cities ; and that the harsher inter- 
 course of life should be softened, wherever it is
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 55 
 
 possible, l)y the sympathies arising out of that 
 " long traditional connection " which Mr Gladstone 
 so cordially appreciates. We know that in our 
 great towns it is impossible. AVhat does a Lon- 
 doner know of the work-people who minister to 
 liis various wants ? of the glazier who mends his 
 windows, of the blacksmith who shoes liis horses, 
 of the carpenter who makes his dog-kennel, of the 
 bricklayer who repairs his garden- wall ? Nothing — 
 absolutely nothing. The country gentleman would 
 know them all ; would have a word or a joke for 
 each, mingled with friendly inquiries after their 
 wives and children, and an invitation to send to 
 tlie Hall for something good if there were sickness 
 in the household. The lady of the house and her 
 daughters would all be frequent visitors at their 
 cottages ; the matrons of the village remembering 
 the young ladies as little girls whom they have 
 carried in their arms, and taking as much pride 
 in them as if they were their own children. 
 
 Within a quarter of a mile of a house in Bel- 
 grave Square there may be families of labouring men 
 huddled together in miserable lodgings of whom
 
 56 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the rich man knows no more than if they were at 
 Timbnctoo. But they know him; and look at him 
 curiously across a wide gulf which is nowhere 
 bridged over by the kindly charities and courtesies 
 of country life. If this gulf is rightly considered 
 one of the most threatening features of our present 
 social state, surely that system is entitled to some 
 degree of credit which helps to confine it within 
 certain limits, and to keep one great division of 
 English society free from its injurious effects. 
 
 We are sometimes told that the agricultural poor 
 have outgrown their old relations with tlie clergy 
 and gentry, and instead of being gratified with their 
 attentions resent them as savouring of condescen- 
 sion. The village grumbler is no stranger to myself. 
 There will always be somebody in such places who 
 conceives himself to have been wronged in the 
 matter of coals, blankets, or soup, and consequently 
 views the whole system with a jaundiced eye. I am 
 perfectly familiar with this species of discontent and 
 the language in whicli it finds expression. But I 
 am also certain, from long and wide experience, that 
 it no more represents the real mind of the agricul-
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 57 
 
 tunil labourer, than the snarl of a disappointed 
 politician represents the general sense of those with 
 whom he generally acts. Both are supposed, l)y 
 persons ignorant of their value, to mean a great deal 
 more than they do : the mutiny of a whole party 
 or the disaffection of a whole parish. They mean 
 nothing of the kind. In some of our villages, no 
 doubt, ideas have been put into the labourer's head, 
 and words into his mouth which are not really his 
 own, but which he thinks at first sight very fine, 
 and reproduces whenever he has a chance. And it 
 is also quite true that the kindest and best disposed 
 of landlords or clergymen may be deficient in that 
 special graciousness which clothes a benefit con- 
 ferred in the garb rather of sympathy than of 
 charity. But whatever sounds of discontent may 
 proceed from either of these two sources, are like the 
 chirp of the grasshoppers described by Burke, com- 
 pared with the silent satisfaction of the other in- 
 habitants of the meadow. Defects of manner are not 
 confined to any one class of benefactors, and would 
 probably be found more prevalent in urban than in 
 rural districts.
 
 58 THE OLD AND TIIK NEW. 
 
 If WG follow the En''lisli "entleman from his 
 home to the bench of magistrates, we shall find 
 him ill the discharge of functions for which his 
 intimate knowledge of the habits and customs of 
 the people peculiarly qualify him, which he and 
 his forefathers have fulfilled for centuries with re- 
 cognised eflfiiciency and integrity, and with a stricter 
 regard for the pecuniary interests of their neigh- 
 bours than any public board is likely to exhibit. 
 " The county magistrates," said the present Lord 
 Derby, a man not given to the indiscriminate effu- 
 sion of sentimental eulogies, " have never been guilty 
 of a job ; " and undoubtedly if the counties, like the 
 nation at large, desire to be governed cheaply, they 
 are not going the best way to work for the attain- 
 ment of that object by cashiering their present 
 public servants. 
 
 As the criminal business at quarter sessions is 
 still to be left with tlie magistrates, the rural public 
 will not be deprived so far of the benefit of their 
 local experience — a kind of knowledge which is far 
 more necessary in dealing with the class of cases 
 usually brought before the magistrates than it is in
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 59 
 
 the superior courts. One great advantage of the 
 present system is, that country gentlemen are not 
 obliged to depend so exclusively on the police for 
 the information they require about the prisoners 
 as those magistrates necessarily are who do not 
 possess the same knowledge of the rural population. 
 AVlien a prisoner is brouglit up before the bench, 
 the squire or the parson can tell at a glance to 
 what section of the country people he belongs, and 
 calculate the antecedent probabilities of his guilt or 
 innocence with considerable accuracy. They will 
 understand the full significance of many apparent 
 trifles which would escape less experienced obser- 
 vers, and the triviality of many incidents which to 
 others might appear to be important. More than 
 t]iis, they can tell better than anybody else could 
 whether the offence committed by any particular 
 prisoner is a specially bad one of its class, and 
 bespeaks criminal propensities in the perpetrator, 
 or whether the extenuating circumstances which 
 may be alleged in mitigation of it are really deserv- 
 ing of consideration. No criminal judge, a stranger 
 to the people, could tell this so easily as a country
 
 GO THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 gentleman ; and the importance of being able to do 
 so is in proportion to the petty character of the 
 offences which arc commonly brought before the 
 bench. 
 
 Of the purely civil duties, till recently discharged 
 by the country gentlemen, some still remain to 
 them, and some are still exercised by them in con- 
 junction witli popular representatives. The county 
 magistrates are ex officio Guardians of the Poor, and 
 being so, are also members of the " Rural Sanitary, 
 Authority " in eacli Union, and of the Highway 
 Board in each highway district. Tliey assessed and 
 levied the county rate ; they were intrusted with the 
 execution of various Acts of Parliament; they granted 
 liquor licences ; they were and are visitors of prisons 
 and lunatic asylums ; and, in short, used to superin- 
 tend and set in motion, either in whole or in })art, 
 the entire administrative machinery established in 
 the English counties — that " immense mass of public 
 business," as Mr Gladstone calls it, " without fee or 
 reward," and in a manner which has " honourably 
 distinguished them for many generations." It 
 ought, one would think, to have been some very
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 61 
 
 grave and pressing necessity that dictated even the 
 partial abolition of sucli a system as this. The 
 analogy which it is sometimes attempted to set 
 up between county councils and town councils is 
 entirely fallacious. Town councils, to begin with, 
 sprang out of tlie necessity of filling up a vacant 
 space. The abolition of the old corporations was 
 not due to any uncontrollable thirst for repre- 
 sentative government on the part of the Ministry 
 of the day. They were described — rightly or 
 wrongly is nothing to the purpose — they w^ere 
 described as liotbeds of jobbery and corruption, 
 such as public opinion could no longer tolerate, 
 and therefore they were condemned to death. These 
 being abolislied, it was necessary to put something 
 in their place, and a representative council was 
 most in accordance with the prevailing sentiment 
 of the period. But had the old corporations been 
 then what quarter sessions are allowed to be now, 
 even by Eadicals themselves, they might have 
 existed down to the present moment. In fact, the 
 history of the ^Municipal Eeform Bill is only a 
 repetition of the history of the Parliamentary Be-
 
 62 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 form Bill which preceded it. This, too, was pri- 
 marily intended to put an end to what was thou^fht 
 a bad system, and only secondarily to establish a 
 new one. It was a disfranchising' ]'>ill first and 
 an enfranchising Bill afterwards ; and when Lord 
 Lyndhurst carried an amendment reversing this 
 order of ideas, the iMinistry held it fatal to the 
 Bill, and resigned at once. 
 
 In the second place, county councils have been 
 called into being under very different circumstances 
 from those which attended the birth of town coun- 
 cils, and invested with powers cnpable of being 
 used for purposes of a very different character. To 
 the agrarian agitation which has been carried on for 
 many years in the English counties there was never 
 any counterpart in the towns. Class has not been 
 set against class in Birmingham and Ipswich as 
 they have been in "Warwickshire and Suffolk — and 
 for this reason indeed, if for no other, that the 
 particular kind of differences which exist in the 
 rural districts do not exist in the towns. In the 
 latter, there has been no doubt a sharp struggle 
 between capital and labour. But the squire lias
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEAIEN. 63 
 
 not been assailed only, or chiefly, as a capitalist. 
 He has been represented as a survival of feudalism, 
 a social tyrant, a privileged and exclusive aristocrat, 
 a cock whose comb must be cut without further 
 delay if the people were ever to hold their heads 
 up. Class jealousies, we repeat, are at work in 
 the counties on a much larger scale than in the 
 towns ; and we must remember that, in virtue of 
 the very functions which the new councils are to 
 exercise, they will be armed with the necessary 
 weapons for gratifying these class jealousies. 
 
 But for all that it may still be in the power of 
 the gentry, if they choose to exert themselves, so to 
 demonstrate their superior fitness for the work of 
 local government and their readiness to administer 
 it with due regard to the rights of all classes, as 
 not onlv to cut the ground from under the agi-arian 
 demagogue, but to check the progress of democracy, 
 and even make their own position stronger than it 
 was before. We may fairly suppose that some part 
 of the confidence with which the Government in- 
 troduced this measure was due to their reliance 
 on the good sense, patriotism, and magnanimity of
 
 64 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the country gentlemen, and the assurance that if, 
 nnder the new system, tliey took the lead in 
 county Ijusiness to wliieh they are entitled, their 
 proved talents for Inisiness would enable them to 
 keep it. There is a hright side to the picture as 
 well as a dark one. We have met with English 
 county members wlio say that here is a great 
 opportunity for the country gentlemen ; tliat they 
 have now the chance offered them of showing what 
 stuff they are made of, and of taking the lead in 
 their respective counties more decidedly than they 
 have ever done before. 
 
 We are very far from saying that there is noth- 
 ing whatever to justify these more hopeful antici- 
 pations. On the contrary, we should be surprised 
 to find that long habits of hereditary respect 
 and well -deserved affection had disappeared in a 
 day. The strength and tenacity of these very 
 sympathies are part of our present thesis. But at 
 the same time we must not allow ourselves to 
 forget that the gentry will now have quite a new 
 class of adversaries and a new kiud of influence 
 to contend against. The lladical candidates for
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 65 
 
 the county and district councils will not be the 
 same class of luen as the Eadical candidates for 
 the House of Commons. They will be well-known 
 local busybodies who, while not aspiring to Parlia- 
 ment, know quite enough of local affairs to be able 
 to impose upon the ratepayers : to persuade them 
 that county government has hitherto been an 
 Augean stable which it is their special province 
 to cleanse ; and that they are the heroes for 
 whom is reserved the honour of slavino; all the 
 local tyrants represented by " squires and spires." 
 It is true, of course, that the one concession for 
 the sake of which alone the gentry and farmers 
 have ever demanded county boards, was entirely 
 dependent on the creation of some new authority 
 in the counties, with a large infusion of the repre- 
 sentative element in its composition : we mean, of 
 course, the contributions in aid of local taxation. 
 This seems very often to be forgotten. It is true 
 tliat what is an act of justice ought not to be 
 made the subject of a bargain. But we must 
 look at facts as they are ; and it is certain that 
 the desired relief could have been granted on no 
 
 E
 
 6 6 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 other terms. This was not the fault of Lord 
 Salisbury or the Conservative Government, l)ut 
 of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, 
 and of the state of public opinion in general. 
 
 At all events, before we quit the subject, we 
 would once more impress upon the country gentle- 
 men the duty of making a great effort to overrule 
 this measure for good. A concession to the spirit 
 of revolution it undoubtedly is, of which the real 
 character and tendency are not to be explained 
 away by the fact tliat past mistakes have made it 
 necessary. But anything less would have ended 
 in something worse ; and, starting from this con- 
 viction, the country gentlemen, if they deserve 
 what has been said of them Ijy their panegyrists, 
 will strain every nerve, in justice to themselves, 
 their ancestors, and their posterity, to bring good 
 out of evil, and so to associate themselves with the 
 new county administration as to make it the means 
 of allaying agitation in the rural districts instead 
 of provoking or inflaming it. Mr Chaplin, speaking 
 in the House of Commons,^ expressed a doubt 
 
 1 April 1888.
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 67 
 
 whether the country gentlemen would care to con- 
 tend for the mastery with the new forces arrayed 
 against them. Our answer is, noUcssc oUige. They 
 are bound by a thousand traditions, and by every 
 dictate of honour and patriotism, not to shrink from 
 such a conflict, however mean and vulgar its ac- 
 cessories. They have to save the country they 
 have helped to make, and to save democracy from 
 itself. The end should dignify the means. It has 
 been the evil destiny of all democracies to drive the 
 best men out of political life. But to many of the 
 general rules which historians and philosophers 
 have deduced from their observation of popular 
 government in the world at large, England has 
 shown herself an exception. Let it be the ambition 
 of her country gentlemen to keep her in the same 
 path, and add another exception to the number. 
 
 " Hac ego sum tantis dignus majoribus, auctam 
 Hac trado natis nobilitate domum." 
 
 The path of duty lies through worse things some- 
 times than thorns and flints — through dreary wastes 
 or noisome swamps, and among creeping things in-
 
 G8 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 iiiimeraLlc. But it may bo the path of glory for 
 all that. 
 
 We hope in this case, however, that the auticipa- 
 patioii may be worse than the reality. The country 
 gentlemen have large claims on the confidence of 
 the peasantry. They have been foremost in all good 
 works undertaken for their benefit — in allotments, 
 in co-operative farms, in improved cottages, in 
 school charities, and recreations. They have had 
 little or nothing to do with the wages question. 
 And the labourers, it is needless to say, know quite 
 enough of the subject to be well aware that in 
 ninety-nine cases out of every hundred the squire 
 has pared his rent-roll to the quick. AVhat with 
 reduced rents here, and farms unlet there, they 
 know that it is out of his power to make any 
 further reductions, such as would enable the farmers 
 to pay higher wages, without shutting up his house 
 altogether, — a result for which another sixpence 
 a-week would be no adequate compensation. 
 
 When " landlordism " is talked about in England, 
 do those who abuse it know anything of the real 
 truth ? Do they know of the social privations and
 
 THE COUNTEY GENTLEMEN. 69 
 
 even hardsliips whicli, all over England, have ac- 
 companied the reduction of rent and the remission 
 of arrears ? They have still, it seems, to learn how 
 largely the peaceable and uncomplaining attitude 
 of the English farmers under their almost unparal- 
 leled misfortunes is due to the present considera- 
 tion and sympathy of their landlords, and the in- 
 fluence of old associations handed down from gener- 
 ation to generation. Those who, in an age of revo- 
 lution and lawlessness, contribute so largely to the 
 maintenance of a better class of feelings among 
 the people, may be rightly styled public bene- 
 factors. But they hardly deserve the name who, 
 either from a desire to curry favour with the mob, 
 as the shortest road to political success, or, what is 
 even worse, from social jealousy, vilify, deride, and 
 calumniate the English country gentleman from 
 year's end to year's end, though he is all the time 
 engaged in fulfilling some of the highest duties of 
 a citizen, and in preserving those moral relations be- 
 tween the higher and the lower orders without which 
 no society can long prosper, and which really lie 
 at the foundation of all national happiness ?
 
 70 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 We may be thought, perhaps, to be verging on 
 more debatable ground when we approacli the sub- 
 ject of field-sports. Yet we challenge contradiction 
 when we say that had a plebiscite been taken in 
 the English counties a dozen years ago, hunting 
 and shooting would have been supported by over- 
 whelming majorities. The noisy few who com- 
 plained in the newspapers or at public meetings, 
 were a very small minority indeed ; and nineteen- 
 twentieths of the farmers would have readily al- 
 lowed that they owed a debt of gratitude to the 
 country gentlemen for keeping up the hunt, rather 
 than any grudge for riding over their fields or pre- 
 serving too many foxes. At the meet of the hounds 
 they chat together, not of rents and prices, but of 
 their respective mounts, the last good run they had, 
 and the chances of finding the fox which, according 
 to the gamekeeper, lies in the neighbouring osier-bed. 
 Before they are off, perliaps a parson trots up, one 
 of the old school, a doctor from the nearest small 
 town, a lawyer, and a banker who is in a position to 
 wear a red coat, and likes to meet his customers in 
 the hunting-field. Hanging on the skirts of the hunt
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 71 
 
 are a body of foot-people — the tailor, the cobbler, 
 the stockinger — from the adjoining village; men 
 prepared to run with the hounds all day, and en- 
 joying the sport as much as my Lord or Sir 
 Eichard. Now, if it were not for the country 
 gentlemen all this would be impossible. They it is 
 who, far more than the nobility, support the hounds, 
 look after the covers, and protect the foxes. They 
 it is who bring all classes together, rich and poor, 
 in the pursuit of a common amusement, in which 
 all distinctions of rank are forgotten, and the best 
 and boldest rider is the most honoured. Hear the 
 foot-people, as they w^alk home, or take their beer 
 at the public-house in the evening, discussing the 
 run, and you will soon know whether the English 
 villagers are hostile to fox-hunting or not. 
 
 The peasantry themselves nourish no antipathy to 
 shooting. They are not very logical ; they have no 
 objection to a system which gives them two or three 
 couples of rabbits in the winter, and congenial em- 
 ployment as beaters when the woods are shot. But 
 they grumble at being punished for poaching, though, 
 unless the game were preserved, there would be
 
 72 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 nothing either for themselves to poach or for the 
 gentry to shoot. I think they would decidedly be 
 opposed to any legislation of which they saw clearly 
 that it would put an end to shooting, with all its 
 incidental " extras." No gentleman makes himself 
 unpopular by keeping up his sliooting for himself 
 and his friends, provided he can wink at an occa- 
 sional delinquent, and takes good care not to have 
 a bully in his gamekeeper. With the farmers the 
 case is somewhat different. Now that the Ground 
 Game Act has been passed, and they can kill the 
 hares and rabbits as they please, they have no griev- 
 ance against the game laws. What tlie farmers want 
 is not to get rid of the game, but to get possession 
 of the shooting. But these, again, are a very small 
 percentage of the whole number ; and the feeling 
 itself is one of such very recent date, and so utterly 
 irrational at the same time, that if it were not 
 made use of by politicians for ulterior purposes, it 
 would soon die out, Farmers should remember, 
 whenever the question of property comes to be at 
 issue between themselves and their landlords, that 
 possession is nine points of the law ; and that if
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. i 3 
 
 either of the two parties is compelled to give way 
 to tlie other, it will not be the proprietors, as long 
 as they can still fall back on the alternative of 
 cultivating their land themselves, and putting an 
 end at once to all squabbles about tenant rights, 
 rent, or sport. 
 
 It may be noted here, that at the reform of the 
 game laws in 1831, no prejudice at all existed 
 against game-preserving in the minds of the Liberal 
 party. Their object was to enable the gentry to sell 
 their game, so that they might drive the poacher 
 out of the market. 
 
 We have spoken of the value of the country 
 gentlemen as provincial administrators and magis- 
 trates, and as exhibiting before the eyes of the people 
 the principle of property in a more amiable and 
 attractive form than it presents elsewhere. We 
 have yet to say a few words on the element which 
 they contribute to the national character as a whole, 
 in which we do not know that their highest value, 
 after all, is not really to be found. There have been 
 good and l)ad, wise and foolish, country gentlemen, 
 as there have been good and bad, wise and foolish
 
 74 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 merchants, lawyers, and doctors ever since the order 
 existed. And in former times, when travelling was 
 difficult and even dangerous, when books were 
 scarce and education what the pupil chose to make 
 it, and wlien there was nothing to take a country 
 gentleman to London unless he was a member 
 of Parliament, it was only natural that his habits 
 and his language should occasionally correspond 
 more nearly than they have done since with those 
 of the classes just below him. Macaulay's coun- 
 try gentleman, like Macaulay's country clergy- 
 man, is of course a gross caricature ; but still 
 of necessity with some elements of truth in it. 
 The more good - natured Addison, who drew his 
 Eoger de Coverley, also drew the Tory fox-hunter. 
 But in the present day, when we can rush from 
 London to Cairo in the time which it formerly 
 occupied to ride from London to Newcastle ; when 
 the best literature of the day is to be found 
 on a country gentleman's table, and he is no 
 stranger either to the beauties of art or the dis- 
 coveries of science ; when he has travelled, seen 
 the world, and mingled in the best society, — the
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 75 
 
 country gentleman of £5000 a-year is intellec- 
 tually as different from his ancestor in the reign 
 of George T. as that ancestor was from Oxford, 
 Halifax, or Queensberry. "With these mental and 
 social accomplishments, however, he retains the love 
 of country life and the more simple and masculine 
 habits which belonged to his forefathers: and it is this 
 combination of hardihood and refinement, this happy 
 admixture of sylvan tastes with urban culture, that 
 imparts its distinctive and differential feature to the 
 character of the present race of country gentlemen. 
 The titled aristocracy of course possess the same 
 qualities, and exercise the same kind of influence 
 on the national character. But they are too few in 
 number to exercise it with the same effect and on 
 the same scale as the gentry who are always resi- 
 dent in the same place, and who know every man, 
 woman, or child upon the land. 
 
 This character is something to be preserved and 
 cherished. As an ingredient for leavening the 
 national character as a whole, it is simply invalu- 
 able ; and the extinction of it would be nothing 
 short of a national calamity. Tliat so deploral^le a
 
 76 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 result is likely to be accelerated by tlie legislation 
 to which we have here briefly called attention — 
 by that " disestal ilishment of the squirearchy," as 
 Mr Caine calls it, and of which tlie ILadicals are 
 now boasting with a light heart — I, for one, do 
 not believe. It would be contrary, indeed, to all 
 experience if the provincial aristocracy — excluded 
 from the public duties which it was once their 
 privilege to fulfil, and deprived of that authority 
 over the people which the discharge of tliem natu- 
 rally confers, living only for themselves, and caring 
 less and less for the hereditary domains which 
 would have thus been robbed of half their value 
 — were able long to maintain either their social or 
 territorial position. There is good reason to hope, 
 however, that the country gentry may yet sur- 
 vive to disappoint those ingenious schemers who, 
 under cover of reforming an administrative system, 
 are bent on overthrowing a social one, and behind 
 their affected enthusiasm for a principle, are con- 
 cealing their jealousy of a class. I feel sure that 
 the catastrophe may be averted, if the gentry take 
 that view of their ol)ligations which we can hardly
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 77 
 
 doubt that they will take. " Wc have all lived long 
 enough when wc die with honour," says the old 
 cavalier ; and if further resistance to the forces of 
 anarchy shall ultimately prove in vain, let it not 
 be said of English gentlemen that they resigned 
 the field to their enemies in any fit of petulance 
 or despondency, or till every effort had been 
 made, for the sake of the entire nation, to preserve 
 that ancient social fabric which has been to the 
 people of this country " the giver of ten thousand 
 blessings." 
 
 It strikes one as remarkable at first sight that 
 when the House of Commons consisted much more 
 largely than it does at present of counti-y gentlemen 
 and their connections, the great majority of whom 
 would be addicted to field-sports, the time abstracted 
 by their parliamentary duties from the hunting and 
 shooting season was larger than it is now. Yet such 
 was the case. Down to the close of the last century, 
 in the ordinary course of business, and when there 
 was nothing particular demanding the attention of 
 the Legislature, the meeting of Parliament was gen-
 
 78 THE 'old and the NEW. 
 
 erally fixed for November or the latter end of Octo- 
 ber. The prorogation then usually took place in 
 May or June, or else early in July. And the 
 English love of rural life was gratified by the 
 commencement of the holidays before the conclu- 
 sion of the hay-harvest. Thus we find, on dipping 
 at random into the parliamentary history, that the 
 session of 1747-48 began on the 10th of November, 
 and ended on the 13th of May ; the session of 
 1748-49 began November 29, and ended May 11 ; 
 the session of 1749-50 began November 16, and 
 ended April 12 ; the session of 1750 on January 
 17, and ended June 25 ; the session of 1751-52 
 on 14th November, and ended March 26 ; the 
 session of 1753, January 11, and ended April 17; 
 the session of 1772-73 on November 26, and ended 
 July 1 ; the session of 1773-74 on November 30, 
 and ended May 26; the session of 1774-75 on 
 October 26, and ended May 23 ; and the session 
 of 1776-77 on October 31, and ended June 6 ; and 
 so on to the end of the first five-and-twenty years 
 of George III.'s reign. Down to that time the ses- 
 sion which began after Christmas or ended after
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 79 
 
 midsummer was a rare exception. With the ac- 
 cession of Mr Pitt to power, a slight change be- 
 comes apparent, but it was very gradual. And 
 even after the French Revolution, though it ceased 
 to be the rule to call Parliament together in Novem- 
 ber, it was frequently done, and it was not till about 
 seventy years ago that the practice began to be 
 looked upon as exceptional, and to be resorted to 
 only in emergencies. What caused the change we 
 have not been able to discover. Why it was that 
 with the commencement of the present century the 
 practice set in of deferring the meeting of Parlia- 
 ment to the beginning of February, no veteran sen- 
 ator still survives to tell us. But we may hazard 
 some speculations on the subject, and the partial 
 solution they suggest may be thought, perhaps, not 
 devoid of plausibility. 
 
 At the beginning of the present century the 
 habits of the English aristocracy were in a tran- 
 sition state. We know that before that great con- 
 vulsion which placed a sword between France and 
 all the rest of Europe, there was a numerous sec- 
 tion of the English nobility and gentry who made
 
 80 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the French noUcssc their models, and were as mis- 
 erable when they were away from I'aris as it: they 
 had been Frenchmen born. Tliese men helped to 
 keep np that distinction between town and country 
 "entlemen with which we are all so familiar in the 
 comedy of the eigliteenth century ; between those 
 members of the territorial aristocracy who filled the 
 theatres and coffee-houses of London, and were the 
 heroes of the fashionable world, and those who lived 
 on their estates, and were content to be known as 
 country squires. It mattered nothing to men of 
 the former stamp when Parliament met or when 
 it was prorogued. They spent their lives between 
 London and Paris, and though tliey were always 
 only a small minority, still they set the fashion, 
 and there were not enough fox - hunters in the 
 House of Commons to exercise any material influ- 
 ence on the arrangement of the session. Shooting 
 rather than hunting seems to have been the fa- 
 vourite amusement of the upper classes ; and it was 
 not till the French Revolution, by stopping our 
 intercourse with the Continent, threw the English 
 aristocracy more exclusively on their own resources,
 
 THE COUNTEY GENTLEMEN. 81 
 
 that fox-hunting assumed its present proportions, 
 and the distinction between a fine gentleman and a 
 fox-hunter gradually ceased to exist. Concurrently 
 with this change we find the meeting of Parliament 
 growing later and later; and though we do not 
 mean that the one change was the direct parent 
 of the other, we should not be surprised if, in- 
 directly, it had a good deal to do with it. It is 
 true that princely hunting establishments had long 
 been kept up at Goodwood, Woburn, Althorpe, 
 Belvoir, Badminton, and Berkeley Castle. The 
 Belvoir Hunt can boast a pedigree of nearly a cen- 
 tury and a half, as it was regularly established in 
 the year 1750. The Badminton Hunt dates from 
 1762. But for all that, the regular London man of 
 the days of Horace Walpole, could he wake up at the 
 present day, would stare his eyes out were the most 
 accomplished performer in a London ball-room, the 
 wittiest talker in a London club, and the best dressed 
 man in the Park or St James's Street, pointed out 
 to him as the best man across country from Melton 
 to Harl)orough, or one who could ride in the van 
 
 of the Pytchley from Naseby to Kil worth. Before 
 
 F
 
 82 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 this fusion took place it is easy to understand 
 why Parliament sliould have met in mid-autumn 
 and been prorogued in May. The ladies naturally 
 preferred London in the winter. The men shot 
 their pheasants in October. Hunting, too, began 
 earlier, and tliere was usually a good recess at 
 Christmas. Even after the change, however, it was 
 found difficult for a long time to combine the two 
 pursuits — that is, of politics and sport ; and it was 
 during this interval that we read of such men as 
 Lord Althorpe and Assheton Smith hurrying up 
 to town after the day's run to vote on some im- 
 portant question, and rushing back again next 
 morning in time to meet the hounds. 
 
 But if the exigencies of sport extended the 
 season to February, the sportsmen had all the 
 advantage of it. That is to say, no one for more 
 than half a century dreamed of turning it to 
 political uses. It was what it professed to be — 
 the Parliamentary holiday: and as Governments 
 in those days remained in power for long terms 
 of years, supported by combinations which, com- 
 pared with modern ones, were founded on a rock.
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 83 
 
 there was really nothing to be gained l)y prolong- 
 ing the parliamentary warfare into the autumn 
 months. This is a very important factor in the 
 result we are considering. It was not wortli while 
 in those days for the country gentlemen to sacrifice 
 their ease, their pleasures, and their home duties to 
 a series of autumnal campaigns eitlier for or against 
 the Government of the country. Xow it is. 
 
 The enormous constituencies created by the Act 
 of 1885 have not, indeed, created what is now 
 commonly called " Parliament out of session," but 
 have invested it with quite a new character. 
 Every constituency is now an open field, and 
 there is hardly a single one of which it can 
 be predicted with absolute certainty that it will 
 return eitlier a Conservative or a Liberal. All 
 are open to attack. There is no such thing 
 as a safe seat or a close seat left, unless it is at 
 our principal universities. The consequence is, 
 that the process of attack and defence is always 
 and everywhere going on almost from the termi- 
 nation of one general election to the beginning of 
 another. This cause alone has multiplied the
 
 84 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 number of public meetings in every constituency 
 by ten or a dozen fold. Some emissary from the 
 enemy's camp is always in the field ; the sitting 
 member is always on his defence; while at the 
 same time each individual of the party is obliged 
 to contribute his share towards the general defence 
 or general indictment of the Government, which is 
 being conducted on a larger scale by his leaders. 
 Of the whole House of Commons, therefore, only 
 a very few lucky members find the recess a period 
 of repose. In the old days no county or borough 
 member was expected to address his constituents 
 more than once a-year. A quiet little meeting in 
 the county town, a haunch of venison or a few brace 
 of pheasants, and a speech of half an hour's dura- 
 tion, were all that was expected of him. But now 
 every village in his division claims its share of 
 his attentions, and resents any apparent neglect. 
 
 Statesmen, then, had nothing to counteract 
 the very natural desire of English gentlemen to 
 escape from the dust and heat and din of the polit- 
 ical conflict into the cooler and quieter atmosphere 
 of country life, with all its favourite occupations.
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 85 
 
 Men like Fox and lYalpole, and in our own 
 time Lord Pahnerston and Lord Derby, were 
 able to throw off official cares when they turned 
 their backs on Downing Street, as they took off 
 their clothes on going to bed. But they would 
 not have been allowed to do so now. Eeproduce 
 the old situation under our present conditions, and 
 we should find Fox, instead of stumping the turnips 
 after partridges, stumping the country against Jin- 
 goism, and abusing " that vile fellow," as he called 
 Pitt, from Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Pitt 
 would be summoned from the shades of Hollwood 
 and his favourite pursuits at Walmer, to take the 
 field on a similar errand. Those happy lunching- 
 parties at the farmhouse, the huge hunches of bread 
 and cheese, the complete freedom and abandon, 
 described by Lady Hester Stanhope, would have 
 had to be exchanged for the noisy streets of some 
 overgrown manufacturing town, and the fetid atmo- 
 sphere of town-halls and platforms. Burke w^ould 
 have been called away from his cows and his 
 cottagers, and the favourite grove in which he held 
 high converse with "Windham and Johnson, to
 
 86 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 speak on bclialf of tlie Liberal Unionists at St 
 James's Hall or the Constitutional Club, and would 
 have fanned the feud between himself and his former 
 friends to frenzied exasperation. Windham would 
 have had no time for mathematics or philosopby, 
 and must have given up his practice of driving 
 about from one country house to another, and con- 
 versing with all sorts and conditions of men, as 
 was his favourite habit. These men tlien would 
 have had no change. They would only have gone 
 from one kind of Parliament to another. They 
 would have had little time for thought, reading, 
 and reflection ; and it may be that in tlmt case 
 some of their finest parliamentary performances 
 would have been lost to us. Many years ago, 
 when this system of autumnal oratory had reached 
 nothing like its present height, the ' Times ' said 
 in reference to a speech of Mr Disraeli's, that all 
 work and no play made even Ben a dull boy. We 
 may be thankful, perhaps, that men such as we 
 have here named — the 
 
 "Magnanimi heroes, iiati melioribus annis" — 
 
 were spared the ordeal.
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 87 
 
 There is a charming little picture drawn by Lock- 
 hart of a party assembled on the banks of Winder- 
 mere during the last week in August 1824, at which 
 Canning, Sir W. Scott, Professor Wilson, Words- 
 worth, and Southey were present, which we must 
 transcribe rrrhatim from the Life : — 
 
 " It would have been difficult to say which star in the 
 constellation shone with the brightest or the softest light. 
 There was ... a plentiful allowance, on all sides, of 
 those airy transient pleasantries in which the fancy of 
 poets, however wise and grave, delights to run riot when 
 they are sure not to be misunderstood. There were 
 beautiful and accomplished women to adorn and enjoy 
 this circle. The weather was as Elysian as the scenery. 
 There were brilliant cavalcades through the woods in the 
 mornings, and delicious boatings on the lake by moon- 
 light." 
 
 *&^ 
 
 A holiday such as this is a real alterative, and 
 when undisturbed by the necessity of replunging 
 into the sea of politics, and preparing a big speech 
 once a -month, would no doubt have the happiest 
 eft'ect in purging away the humours engendered 
 by the parliamentary session. But a certain 
 period of unbroken repose — a real vacation — is
 
 88 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 necessary to the beneficial effects of such recreation. 
 And this, unfortunately, is just what our public 
 men no longer get. Those who like it may still 
 hunt, shoot, and fish; row with beautiful women 
 on the lakes by moonlight ; or even talk with 
 poets and men of letters in their country houses. 
 But they do it all under the shadow of great 
 impending obligations, for ever bringing them 
 back again to the same cares and anxieties, the 
 same trains of thought, and the same moral and 
 mental atmosphere which they have but just quitted ; 
 making that complete escape out of one life into 
 another, that complete emancipation from political 
 and personal worry, which is essential to curative 
 leisure, absolutely impossible. 
 
 On the extent to which the present mode of 
 spending the recess exhausts the health and strength 
 of those statesmen who, with the labours of the 
 autumnal platform, combine the responsibilities of 
 the Cabinet Minister, it is unnecessary to dwell 
 further. We see plainly enough, from evidence 
 now before our eyes, tliat the hard work of a 
 modern session leaves those who bear the burden
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 89 
 
 and heat of the day very unfit to begin a new- 
 political campaign the moment Parliament is closed, 
 even if it is not by itself enough to cut short their 
 existence. That this is no fanciful or exaggerated 
 suggestion is proved by the accompanying extract 
 from the ' Lancet ' of the 17th October 1891:— 
 
 " The remarkable and regretted deaths of two leaders 
 of parties in one week should open the eyes of the public 
 to the fact that only a few men are capable of bearing the 
 strain of Parliament under the acute conditions of party 
 strife which now obtain. It is impossible to doubt that 
 under different conditions the lives of both Mr Smith and 
 Mr Parnell would in all probability have been prolonged. 
 Different hours, a different tone of public discussion, a 
 different bearing of public men towards each other, more 
 like that which obtains among men in common society, 
 less heat and impulse in leaders, would alter for the better 
 the whole character of our legislation, and would sensibly 
 extend the lives of our best men and enable others of the 
 sort to devote themselves to the public service. The bear- 
 ing of this state of matters on the public interest should 
 not pass unnoticed, and should encourage such rules of 
 debate in Parliament and out, and such men only, as 
 favour deliberation. The case of Mr Gladstone is ex- 
 ceptional and misleading. His iiliydque is no rule for 
 common men. He can sleep well and eat well. With all
 
 90 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 liis keenness as a partisan lie can withdraw himself at 
 very short notice into another world — of philosophy, or 
 theology, or mythology. Even for him the present strain 
 of party life is a danger more than his friends like to 
 think of, and from which all who admire genius and 
 revere age would like to see him extricated. But we have 
 to do with more ordinary mortals, on whom, in the long- 
 run, the empire has to rely; and we repeat that for them 
 the strain of Parliament is exhausting, and ought by all 
 means to be abated." 
 
 If to the strain of Parliament in session is added 
 the strain of Parliament out of session, we shall see 
 how terribly injurious to the best interests of the 
 public is the present system. 
 
 If such is its effect on the health of individuals, 
 what is its effect on the health of parliamentary 
 institutions ? In these days of cheap newspapers 
 and rapid carriage the whole country has the par- 
 liamentary debates before it every morning. It sees 
 all that can be said on both sides of any given ques- 
 tion by the best orators and ablest statesmen of the 
 age. It sees their arguments discussed over again 
 by acute and practised writers representing both 
 political parties. Nor does this happen only once
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 91 
 
 in a session. Not a single great Act of Parliament 
 is ever carried now without the whole question 
 being argued three or four times over, as oppor- 
 tunities are presented by different stages of the 
 bill. On each occasion the press repeats its com- 
 ments, readjusts the facts and figures, sets forth 
 the premises and enforces the conclusions anew, till 
 at last it can only be the man who is wholly 
 indifferent to the subject who does not know all 
 that can be known about it. Now, what is the 
 inevitable result of beginning this process all over 
 again — speeches, leading articles, and all — as soon 
 as Parliament is prorogued ? Can it fail to weary 
 and disgust the public with the very name of 
 politics ? They must get sick of the forced invective, 
 the threadbare topics, the hackneyed gibes and 
 sarcasms served up to them by our itinerant 
 politicians between September and January. And 
 what is the further consequence of their becoming 
 sick and tired of such stuff? It is this, that they 
 gradually come to listen to or to read such orations 
 not for anything to be learned from them, but 
 simply as so many exhibitions of party pluck and
 
 92 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 vigour, and as tests of the capacity of their respec- 
 tive champions for winning the great stake. They 
 come to look on a good speech as a lover of the 
 rini? in old times looked on a well - fought round 
 by the pugilist whom he had backed to win. Thus 
 Parliament out of session is simply a big gladia- 
 torial show. This is all it is good for. States- 
 manship, political principle, great public and im- 
 perial interests, are dragged down to tliis level, 
 and rolled in the mire to make sport for the 
 audience. The system, in a word, cheapens and 
 degrades politics to such a degree, that we can 
 hardly wonder at the slight effect which is now very 
 often produced by appeals to more elevated considera- 
 tions. A feeling of general satiety, of indifference 
 and languor, mingled with one of growing contempt 
 and dislike for popular and parliamentary institu- 
 tions, if they necessitate such scenes as these, is 
 gradually diffused through the community, under- 
 mining its political energies and sapping its political 
 faith, till public spirit may become so torpid as 
 to make any kind of revolution possible. 
 
 People are fond of asking why nobody reads tlie
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 93 
 
 debates now. The answer is simple. They have 
 read them all before. And what is still more to 
 the purpose is, that our parliamentary orators have 
 spoken them all before. The future is discounted 
 as well as the past repeated by these hard-pressed 
 disputants. The public bring a jaded appetite to 
 a stale banquet. Formerly, when Parliament met, 
 there was some public curiosity to be satisfied. 
 All was new. Eloquence had again become a 
 novelty. The rivals met in the arena with re- 
 cruited vigour and sharpened rhetoric, with a fresh 
 store of arguments, images, and epigrams, to elevate 
 and to embellish their discourse. Then the debates 
 sparkled. Then it was an intellectual treat to read 
 through four or five columns of the morning papers. 
 But now all the life is taken out of the debates 
 before they begin. It is impossible for any man 
 to be at his best when he is only repeating in 
 Parliament what he has been saying all over the 
 country for the last three months, and which every- 
 body knows by heart. This is one great secret of 
 the flatness and dulness in the parliamentary de- 
 bates of which everybody now complains. Parlia-
 
 94 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 meiit out of session is the ruin of railiainent in 
 session. The House of Commons gradually loses 
 ground iji public estimation, through no fault in its 
 constitution, but merely because on the shoulders of 
 its leading men a burden is laid greater than they 
 can bear. " It was always the trick of our English 
 nation," says Falstaff, " when they had got a good 
 thing, to make it too common." 
 
 Finally, we have to consider what is, or probably 
 will be, the effect on politics of making public life 
 a business to which men have to apply themselves 
 the whole year round, as they do to the bar, to the 
 exchange, or the factory. Again, the answer to this 
 question is one which he who runs may read. Pro- 
 fessional politics will be left to professional politicians 
 — men who enter Parliament intending to live by it, 
 as they would by the practice of law, medicine, or 
 commerce. This system would, of course, very soon 
 lead to the payment of members, and it would not 
 stop there. An income derived from this source 
 would be extremely precarious, and could only be re- 
 garded by professional politicians as a stepping-stone 
 to something better. Thus the number of men in
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 95 
 
 Parliaiuent wlio wanted something from the Govern- 
 ment would be enormously increased, and the inde- 
 pendence of the House, as a body, be proportionally 
 diminished. Even if we set aside, for the moment, 
 mere pecuniary considerations, we shall see that, 
 under the conditions we are supposing, the character 
 of the House must necessarily deteriorate. The class 
 of men we are contemplating, if they were not paid 
 in coin, would want to be paid in cake ; if they did 
 not want place, they would certainly want some- 
 thing else. They would not give their time and 
 trouble for nothing. They would want celebrity, 
 notoriety, or whatever else it might be called. 
 Thus the number of members who desired always 
 " to keep themselves in evidence," as the phrase 
 runs, large as it is now, would then be still larger ; 
 and the House of Commons, unmanageable as it is 
 now, would tlien be more intractable than ever. 
 
 Now the majority of the country gentlemen who 
 sit in the House of Commons accept a seat in 
 Parliament as one of the natural duties appertain- 
 ing to their station in life, — a dignified and hon- 
 ourable duty, no doubt, but not one which many
 
 96 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 of them would caro to undertake for the sake of 
 any personal gratification it affords them. It is 
 simply one out of many obligations wliich their 
 position imposes on them. They have to manage 
 their estates, to look after their tenantry, to attend 
 to local business, to help in the maintenance 
 of law and order, and also at stated times to 
 give their attendance in the great council of the 
 nation, to watch over the wider interests of the 
 entire empire. Formerly almost every Eoyal Speech 
 on the prorogation of Parliament referred to the 
 important duties awaiting members of Parliament 
 in their respective counties. In Parliament they 
 make their influence felt in a quiet, unobtrusive 
 manner, and not only bring to bear on the debates 
 that knowledge of business and practical acquaint- 
 ance with administrative duties to which they are 
 trained from their boyhood, but contribute also, 
 in a very great degree, to maintain a high tone of 
 feeling and a high standard of honour in the popu- 
 lar assembly. But tliey do not care to make long 
 speeches, to see their names continually in the 
 newspapers, or to have a hand in every question
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 97 
 
 that comes before the House, whatever its character 
 or magnitude. Neither their vanity nor their am- 
 bition offers any obstruction to public business, 
 though there may be a few fighting men among 
 them, who, for the mere fun of the thing, for the 
 gaudinm ccrtaminis, occasionally distinguish them- 
 selves in this branch of parliamentary warfare. 
 But it is not the habit of the class. 
 
 On the greater number of these men — not, of 
 course, on all — the threat of a dissolution falls 
 harmlessly. To be out of Parliament does not 
 make them less important. Their position in 
 society is assured; and if their constituents reject 
 them, though they may be mortified for the mo- 
 ment by the loss of confidence which it implies, 
 they have abundant compensations to which the 
 professional politician is a stranger. "We ask any 
 impartial man whether Parliament would lose or 
 gain by the withdrawal from the House of Com- 
 mons of the former class, leaving their places to 
 be filled up by the latter. If politics become a 
 trade, the House of Commons will become a shop 
 
 Principles and projects will be turned over like 
 
 G
 
 98 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 bales of muslin or samples of grocery, and puffed 
 and pressed upon the public according to the re- 
 turn they promise. Try our disestablishment at 
 so much ; taste our Home Rule ; compulsory absti- 
 nence very cheap to-day ; and so on. This is what 
 politics would in time be brought to in the hands 
 of professional politicians. 
 
 The tendency of our present system, the recess as 
 it is, is certainly in this direction. It cannot be 
 expected that the gentry as a class should continue 
 to give their unpaid services to the nation if the 
 nation in return leaves them no leisure to enjoy 
 themselves in their own way, which is all the re- 
 muneration they ask. It may be said, of course, 
 if the country gentlemen don't choose to take the 
 trouble to come to Parliament to look after their 
 own interests, they cannot expect other people to do 
 it for them. If they don't choose to sacrifice their 
 leisure and their country life to the public good, the 
 public will soon leave them no pleasures to enjoy, 
 and more leisure than they want. It may be so ; 
 but though this would punish the gentry, it would 
 not bring them back to the House of Commons ; and
 
 THE COUNTEY GENTLEMEN. 99 
 
 we are now considering what the country, not what 
 the gentry, would lose by such a change. The time 
 would come, we think, when even many honest 
 Eadicals would l^e obliged to admit that a Parlia- 
 ment of professional place-hunters and lovers of 
 notoriety at any price was a bad exchange, after all, 
 for the squirearchy, who, with all their faults, were 
 at least men of practical common-sense, experienced 
 in business, and inaccessible to bribes ; who did 
 their duty without fussing and foaming or making 
 mountains out of mole-hills ; and who had the 
 advantage, as Mr Chamberlain himself has admitted, 
 of being gentlemen. 
 
 No change in either the length or the season of the 
 recess would necessarily affect the abuse of it which 
 we have here been considering. But changes have 
 been proposed for other reasons, and they are these : 
 first, in the hope that a longer session may over- 
 power the system of obstruction ; secondly, because 
 there is a growing dislike in the House of Commons 
 to sitting so late into the summer. It is doubtful, 
 however, whether any enlargement of the session 
 would by itself be sufficient to nullify such obstruc-
 
 100 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 tion as we have recently witnessed. Tlie obstruc- 
 tionists would be equal to the occasion, and could 
 spin out their system as a spider does its web, out of 
 their own bowels, to any length that was necessary. 
 On the second plea there is more to be said, but it 
 is a question which is complicated by many con- 
 flicting considerations. We cannot go back to the 
 old system exactly as it was, and hardly any alter- 
 native can be suggested which will not inconveni- 
 ence somebody. 
 
 The more the recess becomes like another session, 
 and the more the session encroaches on the sphere 
 of the recess, the greater the risk we run of altering 
 the composition of the House of Commons in the 
 manner now described. Yet it ought to be perfectly 
 possible so to redistribute the time now usually 
 allotted to the session, and even to extend it, as 
 not seriously to interrupt either the duties or the 
 pleasures of a class so essential to the efficiency of 
 Parliament as the English landed proprietor. It 
 has been proposed that the session should termin- 
 ate in the beginning of July, and begin at the end 
 of October. To repeat what we have said, the time
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 101 
 
 proposed is not long enough, and it falls at the 
 wrong season of the year. It is not long enough for 
 two reasons, — first, because it would not bring the 
 requisite period of relief to our overworked statesmen; 
 and secondly, because, as has been pointed out by 
 highly competent critics, it is contrary to the pub- 
 lic good that the Executive should be constantly 
 exposed to the harrowing process of parliamentary 
 interrogation and the noisome buzz of political blue- 
 bottles for more than half the year. A system 
 which was originally intended for the detection of 
 abuses has now become an abuse itself, by which the 
 principle of Government is continually corroded, its 
 authority lessened, and its dignity degraded ; and to 
 enlarge the period within which these practices are 
 possible would be the most cruel unkindness we 
 could inflict on representative institutions. 
 
 A recess from midsummer to Michaelmas would 
 fall at the wrong time of the year for two reasons 
 likewise. If it be thought a small thing that it 
 would rob so many members of both Houses of 
 those healthy and invigorating rural sports in 
 which they now forget the asperities of party
 
 102 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 warfare, and recruit their physical strength after 
 six montlis spent in the exhausting atmosphere of 
 Parliament, it cannot be thought a small thing 
 that it should curtail, if it did not entirely destroy, 
 all tlieir opportunities of mixing freely with the 
 farmers and labourers of the county. A recess 
 which began witli the beginning of the hay 
 harvest and ended with the end of the corn 
 harvest, would be exactly coextensive with the 
 very busiest period of the year both for the 
 farmer and the labourer; and just when they be- 
 came at leisure to attend meetings, agricultural 
 shows, and other gatherings which bring the rural 
 population together, their parliamentary represen- 
 tatives would be called away to their duties in 
 another place. The hours of attendance in the 
 session are regulated with a view to one large class 
 of members who have business engagements else- 
 where — namely, the lawyers ; and due regard should 
 also be shown to the convenience of another class 
 who have duties scarcely less important. I am 
 not called upon to decide positively when the 
 session should end and when it should begin.
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 103 
 
 There must always be a margin, either for con- 
 traction or expansion. But the six months which 
 begin with the 1st of August seem at all events 
 either the right time for the recess, or the right 
 time out of which to carve the recess. 
 
 We have little real summer in England now 
 before the middle of July ; and if Parliament 
 were prorogued at the end of that month to meet 
 again the first week in January, nobody would 
 lose much in the article either of summer suns 
 or autumn sports. If, for the sake of the Christmas 
 holidays, we took the first fortnight in December 
 instead of the first fortnight in January, members 
 of Parliament would have August, September, 
 October, and Xovember at their absolute disposal, 
 with half December and half January as well, 
 which would give them as much time for travelling, 
 fishing, shooting, and hunting as they could reason- 
 ably desire, independently of the many off-days 
 which they are always able to secure. Such an 
 arrangement would leave the country gentlemen 
 two clear months between the end of the harvest 
 and the meetins; of Parliament to move about
 
 104 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 among their constituents and discharge all those 
 other public duties to which we have referred ; 
 and the general system of English rural life, with 
 all its habits, customs, and traditions, would remain 
 untouched. 
 
 The duration of the session, with the season at 
 which it should be fixed, is a separate question 
 from that with which this chapter commences — 
 namely, the most useful and beneficial mode of 
 spending it. The dedication of the parliamentary 
 holiday to what may be called work out of school 
 has been carried to an excess which is mischievous 
 to all parties concerned in it. Our senators should 
 play when they are at play, and work when they 
 are at work. And the vast majority of the public 
 would be exceedingly thankful to see the newspapers 
 filled during the autumn with something more 
 amusing than eiglit or ten columns of extra-parlia- 
 mentary speeches. The principal London morning 
 papers have almost entirely lost their old literary 
 character. We look in vain in the ' Times ' for 
 those admirable reviews of books which, down to 
 twenty years ago, were so attractive a feature in
 
 THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN. 105 
 
 the leading journal. The 'Standard' never gave 
 quite so much space to literary matter, but what 
 it did give it has taken away. And the answer is 
 always the same. It is blocked out by the big 
 speeches of vacation orators. Formerly, when Par- 
 liamenc was up, a number of columns were at once 
 set free for more lively and entertaining matter. 
 Now, it is the same dull tale of politics and party 
 warfare the whole year round. To shorten the 
 recess would only aggravate the evil. If we must 
 bear with the prolongation of political loquacity all 
 through the autumn — and it seems too firmly estab- 
 lished now to be got rid of — let us submit to it in 
 patience rather than fiy for refuge to the worse 
 offender of the two. The recess may bore us, but 
 in Parliament we see agencies at work fraught with 
 ruin alike to representative institutions and to social 
 liberty. 
 
 Obstruction, if it cannot be suppressed, cannot be 
 allowed to be the prerogative of a single party. If 
 one side chooses to make legislation impossible for its 
 opponents, the other side will do so too. Conserva- 
 tives cannot have their own failures imputed to in-
 
 106 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 competence, and the successes of tlie Eadicals to su- 
 perior ability, when, were the same tactics employed 
 at,'ainst the Eadicals as the Radicals employ against 
 the Conservatives, the result would be exactly the 
 same. That can never be permitted; yet hardly a 
 single politician hi his sober senses would deny 
 that a few more sessions like that of 1890 would 
 bring parliamentary government and our existing 
 constitution within measurable distance of their 
 end. 
 
 I would, moreover, venture to suggest that the 
 operation of this system is gradually teaching 
 the people something. It is teaching them that 
 this informal and irregular political agency, 
 though it cannot legislate, can do almost every- 
 thing else which Parliament can do. It can 
 drag abuses into the light of publicity. It can 
 expose or circulate fallacies, as the case may be, 
 with equal facility and etlect. It can bring the 
 influence of public opinion to bear on the policy 
 of Ministers or the conduct of the Opposition 
 with equal force and almost equal directness. It 
 can explain or obscure measures, perplex or sim-
 
 THE COUNTKY GENTLEMEN. 107 
 
 plify public questions, with as much clearness and 
 adroitness. If we are told that, true as this may be, 
 it is only true because the orators of the recess are 
 members of Parliament, and that if they were not, 
 half they say would be unheeded, — the answer is 
 that it would not be so if there were no Par- 
 liament at all, and no man had any advantage over 
 another in that respect. Now, of course, a member 
 of Parliament, especially if he is a member of the 
 Government, or one of the Opposition leaders, speaks 
 with an authority to which no private man can 
 make pretence. But if no comparison of this kind 
 were possible, and all spoke from the outside, 
 would not the same qualities which bring a man 
 to the front in Parliament bring him to the front 
 on the platform, and would not real eloquence, 
 political knowledge, and great intellectual power, 
 command as ready attention as they do now ? 
 We are drawing no conclusions, but such reflec- 
 tions must naturally occur to us as we contem- 
 plate the oratory of the autumn. The House of 
 Commons is no longer the sole guardian of our 
 liberties and our persons. It is no longer tlie sole
 
 108 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 or the most effective critic of Ministerial policy, 
 whether foreign or domestic. Its natural child 
 shows a vigour and ability not uncommon to ille- 
 gitimate offspring. The two together give us too 
 much of a good thing, and are likely to make us 
 tired of both. This can hardly last for ever — one 
 of the two must retire from the field. It is even 
 now fast coming to be recognised that either the 
 " recess as it is " or the session as it is, involves a 
 great waste of force, and too great a strain both 
 on the health and strength of politicians and the 
 interest and attention of the public. What will 
 happen if England ever becomes really and 
 thoroughly tired of political discussion, we forbear 
 to conjecture. But it is an experiment which the 
 leading class of politicians seem bent on trying. 
 We fully admit the difficulty of making any change 
 now, for who is to stop first ? The disease, we fear, 
 must run its course, and we must await the result 
 with what fortitude we may.
 
 THE FARMERS. 
 
 rpHE word " farmer " is a, much more compre- 
 hensive one at the present day than it used 
 to be in former times. It was once applied ahnost 
 exchisively to the class of men which, according to 
 its derivation, it properly denotes — those, that is, 
 who till hired ground, as distinct from the yeoman, 
 or, later on, the gentleman farmer, who tills his 
 own. Within the last generation, however, the 
 love of agriculture has spread so widely among 
 all classes, that tenant-farmers may now be found 
 in every rank of society. Yet even now, the word, 
 taken simply by itself, without any differentiating 
 term, is usually held to signify one who stands 
 below the line conventionally supposed to separate
 
 110 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the "table-land of gentility," as ]Mr Oldlnick calls 
 it, from all beneath. That is the sense in which 
 I propose to use it on the present occasion. Dis- 
 tinctions of this nature are always more or less 
 invidious ; nor should I have mentioned them at 
 all, but for the necessity of making perfectly clear 
 to what manner of man I was referrino;. Not to 
 pursue this question any further, it is obvious that 
 among agriculturists in general, whether amateurs 
 or professionals, the line of demarcation is a very 
 irregular and devious one ; and I shall content 
 myself with saying that in writing of the manners, 
 the prejudices, the habits, the vices and virtues of 
 this particular class, whether yeomen or tenants, 
 I am throughout referring to men who have not, 
 as a rule, received a liberal education, and who do 
 not, or did not till within the last thirty years, 
 think of copying the manners and customs per- 
 taining to the class above them. 
 
 I say this with the less hesitation, because it 
 will rather be to what are called " farmers of the 
 old school" that I shall direct attention, affording, 
 as they do, the most strongly marked types of the
 
 THE FARMERS. Ill 
 
 genus to which they belong, and ilkistrating most 
 clearly that old tripartite division of rural life 
 which I believe is peculiar to this country, and 
 which, with some inconveniences, has hitherto 
 worked most beneficially. But whether dealing 
 with the old style or new, I shall be thinking 
 chiefly of the man who occupies a middle posi- 
 tion between the peasant farmer and the gentle- 
 man farmer, or the tenant who is socially his 
 equal ; neither of these two extremes being equally 
 characteristic of England, or exhibiting in the same 
 perfection the traits on which I love to look back. 
 There are peasant farmers and gentlemen farmers 
 everywhere. But the man I have in my eye is 
 only to he found at home. 
 
 My own recollections go back to a time when 
 there were still a good many farmers left who 
 lived quite more major um — dined in their kitchens, 
 drank nothing but ale, and were only just begin- 
 ning to take to black coats on Sunday. One such 
 man I can remember well, who has indeed not 
 been dead for more than ten or twelve years. 
 He was the sole surviving specimen in the neigh-
 
 112 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 bourhood where he lived of a class which had 
 been long extinct, and was pointed out by other 
 farmers as a social curiosity. But he was a 
 warm man, had a large balance at his bankers, 
 and kept his farm, some 300 acres, in excel- 
 lent condition, albeit little indebted to science or 
 machinery. He was n- kind of king on market- 
 days, for whatever he bought, he would always 
 have the best, and never haggled at the price. 
 If you called upon him, he received you in the 
 kitchen, and a jug of home-brewed, that incom- 
 parable luxury which has almost disappeared be- 
 fore the march of refinement, was placed upon 
 the table, with no apology for not offering wine. 
 He never missed church, and could always be relied 
 upon when money was wanted for any charitable 
 or religious purpose. He, we may be sure, was 
 never behind-hand with his rent, nor ever asked 
 for a reduction. His farm was a sufficient occupa- 
 tion for him. He neither shot nor hunted, thouQ'h 
 lie had opportunities of doing both. He had no 
 books : and though not possessed of high spirits or 
 a man of many words, was always cheerful, always
 
 THE FAPiMERS. 113 
 
 sober, and always ceremoniously respectful to those 
 whom he recognised as his betters. When ho 
 died, it was found that he had amassed money ; 
 and though ho lived into the bad times, he did 
 not seem to have suffered from them. 
 
 Another of the same kind, whom I remember 
 still better, was a somewhat crabbed and gnarled 
 old fellow, but thoroughly sound at core. I can 
 just recollect him at church, dressed a good deal 
 like Mr Poyser — the same drab coat and breeches, 
 and the same richly flowered waistcoat. These, how- 
 ever, disappeared in my early childhood, about the 
 same time as the village stocks and the parisli 
 clerk's top-boots, and gave way to the broad-skirted 
 black garment which remained his Sunday attire 
 to his death. The sons of such men were then 
 wearing swallow-tailed coats, generally dark-green 
 or brown, with brass buttons. But the fathers 
 remained faithful to the old style, and I think, as 
 far as personal appearance went, they had the best 
 of it. Old j\laster AYoollem, as he was always called 
 — his real name was Woolcome — was a man of 
 saturnine temperament, disliked rather by us boys 
 
 H
 
 114 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 because he objected to our getting over his fences, 
 or prowling about his farmyard and out-liouses, 
 bird-nesting, or sparrow-catching ; but a staunch 
 friend to tlie parson, an excellent master, and liberal 
 in his charities. He was even more strict in his 
 devotion to old farming ideas than the other old 
 gentleman I have mentioned. He had been brought 
 up at a time when farmers or their wives and 
 daughters went off to market in the winter while 
 it was still dark, transacted their business by candle- 
 light, and were home again by dinner-time. To the 
 last he did not like to see his daughters doing any 
 ornamental work, reading any light literature, or 
 exhibiting the faintest approach to any little finery 
 in their dress. If he detected anything of the kind, 
 he generally remained quite silent, but those who 
 knew him knew well what he meant. Sometimes 
 he refused food — literally, like David, turning his 
 face to the wall and eating no bread. The last 
 authenticated instance of his declining to eat his 
 dinner was on his suddenly discovering that liis 
 eldest son had been guilty of a breach of all the 
 family traditions by going out with the hounds.
 
 THE FAEMERS. 115 
 
 The young man did not appear at table. The new 
 spurs were missing from their accustomed hook over 
 the fireplace. The old man remembered that the 
 hounds had met in the neighbourhood that morning. 
 The bitter truth flashed upon him in a moment. 
 " 'M.y lord's gone a-hunting," he exclaimed to his wife, 
 with suppressed emotion, " and you knowed to it." 
 This last reflection was too much for him, and, 
 drawing his chair away to the chimney-corner, he 
 refused to be comforted. His silence on these 
 occasions was more terrible than words : he moved 
 about the house and premises wrapped in the deepest 
 gloom : and during one of these fits of dejection, 
 his youngest daughter, a nice-looking girl of nine- 
 teen, was driven in despair to tuck up her sleeves, 
 go down upon her knees, and scrub the kitchen- 
 floor till her arms ached, as the only means of 
 recallino; him to more cheerful views of existence. 
 Propitiated by this act of homage to the spirit of 
 a better age and the deities of his own youth, old 
 Master Woollem is said to have actually smiled, and 
 harmony was once more restored to the domestic 
 circle.
 
 116 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 In spite of these little peculiarities, "Wonlcome 
 was a man of great natural slirewdness and general 
 intelligence, was never loud or noisy in his talk, 
 and knew "liow to conduct himself," and what 
 kind of language to use, in whatever society he 
 was thrown. He would never have said the gross 
 things which some farmers of those days uttered 
 quite innocently concerning their flocks and herds, 
 nor yet the really simple or really racy things which 
 I have heard from others, indicating no doubt some 
 confusion of ideas, but all the more interesting on 
 that account to students of the laws of thought. 
 
 I recollect a great, big, burly fellow, six feet high, 
 and younger than either of the above, who, when 
 asked his age, could only refer the questioner to 
 his landlord. " I am three years younger nor Sir 
 Eichard," he would say ; " I allers wos." This was 
 conclusive in his eyes. I once saw this man trem- 
 bling on the verge of scepticism in consequence of 
 the inexplicable behaviour of the elements. That 
 a heavy flood should have come on the day after 
 he had brought down his sheep from the uplands, 
 and turned them into the meadows, was more than
 
 THE FAKMEKS. 117 
 
 he could reconcile with the theory of a moral 
 governor of the universe. " It seemed very odd," he 
 said; and I left him leaning on a gate struggling 
 very hard to vinelicate the ways of God to man, 
 but evidently without success, Tliis man ultimately 
 hanged himself in his stable — whether distracted 
 by the difficulties surrounding the origin of evil, or 
 vexed, as the neighbours thought, at being cheated 
 out of the price of a calf, I have never fully under- 
 stood. 
 
 These were all men of the old leaven — men who, 
 if not free from the vices and deticiencies common 
 to the middle classes in general, possessed at least 
 some negative virtues peculiar to themselves. They 
 were neither luxurious nor ostentatious ; were con- 
 tent to live after the manner of their forefathers, 
 and had no desire to be anything but what they 
 were. Their only vehicle was the old "shay-cart"; 
 and very few of them hunted, unless they were 
 breeders of, or dealers in, horses, and did it pro- 
 fessionally. Tliey farmed well according to the 
 fashion of the age, and had no other ambition. 
 They lived very plainly, not to say hardly — by
 
 118 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 110 means thinking it necessary to eat bntclier's 
 meat every day. I knew a thriving farmer, rent- 
 in<>' two hundred acres — whicli, in the midland 
 counties, is considered a good - sized farm — and 
 keeping forty cows, who sat down with his family 
 every Sunday to a large batter-pudding made in a 
 puncheon, with a piece of bacon in the middle, 
 wliicli they ate cold for dinner during the re- 
 mainder of the week. The cost of living to farmers 
 of this class was a mere trifle. They bought scarcely 
 anything. Milk, butter, cheese, bacon, eggs, poultry, 
 pork, and vegetables, they got at cost price off" their 
 own land. They brewed their own beer and baked 
 their own bread. Families who lived much better 
 than those who assembled round the puncheon — 
 our friend Woollem, for instance — couldn't have 
 spent more than three hundred a-year, and I don't 
 suppose he spent that. Suppose his farm was 
 three hundred acres, and that he paid £2 an acre 
 for it all round : according to the common calcula- 
 tion in those days,^ his land would yield him three 
 
 ■* Not ill these. See a most interesting jjaper read by Major 
 Craigie before the Farmers' Chib in London on December 10, 
 1888, "The Farmers' Labour Bill."
 
 THE FARMERS. 119 
 
 rents — one for his landlord, one for his labour, 
 and one for himself. That would give him £600 
 a-year for his own share. I believe that if any- 
 thing I am under the mark, for some said the 
 tenant should make four rents, one to put by, 
 besides what I have mentioned. But allowing the 
 first calculation to be correct, a thrifty man, in 
 the days I am thinking of, would have saved be- 
 tween three and four hundred a-year ; and this 
 very old man we have been talking about — Wool- 
 come — did actually die worth some £15,000, besides 
 the value of his stock, having had the farm for forty 
 years. This was the generation that made money ; 
 the next was the generation that spent it; the 
 present is the one that wants it. 
 
 There have, of course, always been, coexistent 
 with the above class of farmers, a higher and a 
 lower class. The farmer who rented, maybe, seven 
 or eight hundred acres, and had land of his own 
 besides, though not perhaps a gentleman any more 
 than tlie men I have described, was a man of 
 different tastes and habits, hunted and shot, and 
 sometimes went to the seaside. On the other hand,
 
 120 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the smaller man with thirty, fifty, or seventy acres, 
 was little more than a peasant. But I think the 
 class which came between the two was, as I have 
 already said, the most truly representative ; and 
 this is the class, I am afraid, on whom " time and 
 fate " have laid the heaviest hand. But they could 
 not, under any circumstances, have remained as 
 they were forty years ago. The march of intellect 
 must have gone over them, flattening down their 
 characteristic oddities and removincj their moss- 
 grown prejudices, even had no agricultural depres- 
 sion threatened to extinguish them. Such men 
 may doubtless still be found unchanged in the re- 
 moter nooks and corners of the country. I have 
 heard that they survive in Devonshire ; but 
 they are fast disappearing from the great agricul- 
 tural counties in the central and eastern parts of 
 England. Were the present writer to outlive them 
 all, he could never forget them — their kindly, 
 hearty ways, their homely politeness and hospi- 
 tality, their mellow ale and their pork -pies, pro- 
 duced, generally speaking, on coursing days, that
 
 THE FAKMEKS. 121 
 
 being a sport in which the most scrupulous of 
 them thought it no presumption to indulge. 
 
 " Saturnia regua, valete." 
 
 If another golden age is in store for us, I at all 
 events shall not be here to see it. 
 
 Between the smaller yeomen and the tenant- 
 farmer such as I have described him, there was 
 never much to choose in point of intelligence, 
 education, or refinement. The small freeholders 
 once upon a time, perhaps, were a valuable political 
 element in rural society, and to sonie extent they 
 are so still. But everybody in the. country is 
 tolerably independent now, and the old-fashioned 
 yeoman, with his many real and many imputed 
 virtues, mingled so large an infusion of more 
 questionable (j[ualities, that I know not whether 
 his gradual disappearance is altogether to be re- 
 gretted. Not that he has disappeared yet, by any 
 means. " People ask," said Lord Beacousfield, " where 
 the Buckinghamshire freeholders are now ? Why, 
 where you would expect to find tliem — in Buck-
 
 122 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 inghamshire, to be sure." And it is a great mis- 
 take to suppose tliat the class of small proprietors 
 has either vanished or is likely to vanish very 
 soon. They are not subject to the same disturbing 
 causes as the tenant-farmer. The owner may farm 
 as badly as he pleases, exhaust his land, allow his 
 house, his farm-buildings, and his fences to go to 
 rack and ruin ; but as long as he can scrape 
 enough from the soil to pay the interest on his 
 mortgage and keep body and soul together, there 
 is nobody to move him on. As we know, he clings 
 tenaciously to the ground, and the result is that 
 he is still there when many better men than 
 himself have been obliged to go. His time may 
 come, as it would assuredly come, in the third or 
 fourth generation, to any new class of peasant- 
 proprietors. But he is not yet a thing of the 
 past, and is still to be seen, in a state of nature, 
 in all the English counties that I am acquainted 
 with. I may here add tliat, according to the latest 
 agricultural returns, of the thirty-two million seven 
 hundred thousand acres of which England consists, 
 very nearly five millions are farmed by their owners.
 
 THE FAKMEKS. 123 
 
 The peasant-proprietor was and is simply what 
 Ills name implies. It was and is the yeoman of 
 two or three hundred acres in whom the special 
 attributes of his class are seen to the greatest 
 perfection. In a country village of the olden time, 
 with no resident gentleman, such a man was under 
 no moral restraint whatever. There was no public 
 opinion, and if there had been, he would not have 
 cared about it. He was a little king — as irrespon- 
 sible and despotic as a Turkish pasha. A good type 
 of the class has been given us by George Eliot in 
 Squire Cass. He was rather above the yeoman class 
 in point of property. But his character was exactly 
 theirs. Such men, generally speaking, did not, and 
 do not, set a good example to the neighbourhood. 
 They were, as a rule, scrupulously honest, liberal, 
 and hospitable. But as for temperance, soberness, 
 and chastity, these virtues were whistled down the 
 wind. Twenty years ago they were still very much 
 what the smallest class of squires had been a 
 hundred and fifty years before. There were good 
 men and moral men among them then, and probably 
 there are more now. But their absolute freedom
 
 124 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 from the corrective influence of all outside opinion ; 
 their ignorance and self - importance ; their well- 
 filled pockets, and their limited range of interests, 
 — betrayed too many of them into the same mode 
 of living as Tony Lumpkin promised himself when 
 he should " come to his own." 
 
 Even the most old - fashioned farmers whom I 
 can recollect had given up the practice of dining 
 with their labourers. They no longer sat at the 
 head of the long oak-table and carved the bacon, 
 as Cobbett remembered them doinu'; and even in 
 his day the process of transformation had begun. 
 In 1825 he wrote as follows :— 
 
 "When the old farm-houses are down (and down they 
 must come in time), what a miserable thing the country 
 win be ! Those that are now erected are mere jjainted 
 shells, with a mistress within who is so stuck up in a 
 place she calls the liarlour, with, if she have children, the 
 'young ladies and gentlemen' about her; some showy 
 chairs and a sofa (a mfa by ail means); half-a-dozen 
 prints in gilt frames hanging up; some swinging book- 
 shelves with novels and tracts upon them ; a dinner 
 brought in by a girl that is perhai^s better ' educated ' than 
 she ; two or three nicknacks to eat instead of a piece of
 
 THE FARMERS. 125 
 
 bacon and a pudding ; tlie lionse too neat for a dirty-shoed 
 carter to be allowed to conae into ; and everything proclaim- 
 ing to every sensible beholder that there is here a constant 
 anxiety to make a show not warranted by the reality. The 
 children (which is the worst part of it) are all too clever to 
 wor^- ; they are all to be gentlefoll-s. Go to plough ! Good 
 God ! What ! ' young gentlemen ' go to plough ! They 
 become clerks, or some skimming - dish thing or other. 
 They flee from the dirty worh as cunning horses do from 
 the bridle. What misery is all this ! What a mass of 
 materials for proclaiming that general and dreadful con- 
 vulsion that must, first or last, come and blow this funding 
 and jobbing and enslaving and starving system to atoms ! " ^ 
 
 Cobbett was ridino; throu"]i the home counties 
 when he wrote this, and sixty years ago the change 
 had hardly spread a great deal farther. Still this 
 was the beginning of it, and we likewise read on tlie 
 same page — 
 
 " There was no reason to expect that farmers would not 
 endeavour to keep pace, in point of show and luxury, Avith 
 fund-holders, and with all the tribe that war and taxes 
 created. Farmers were not the authors of the mischief. 
 And now they are compelled to shut the labourers out of 
 their houses, and to pinch them in their wages in order 
 
 ^ Rural Rides and Drives, p. 274.
 
 126 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 to be able to pay their own taxes ; and besides this, the 
 manners and the principles of the working class are so 
 changed, that a sort of self-preservation bids the farmer 
 (especially in some counties) to keep them from beneath 
 his roof." 1 
 
 The distress among the peasantry which caused 
 this last sentence to be written passed away in time. 
 But the change in the farmers went on, and in the 
 course of another generation produced the new race 
 of whose style of living we have heard so much since 
 the agricultural depression set in. Cobbett's picture, 
 which I have here quoted, represents the change 
 under its most ridiculous aspect ; and as events have 
 turned out, it proved an unfortunate one for the 
 farmers. Had they continued to live in the old style 
 during what have been called the good times — that 
 is to say, roughly speaking, from about 1835 to 1875 
 — they might have been in a very different position 
 now. It took nearly twenty years for things to 
 settle down again after the peace of 1815 ; but as 
 soon as the farmers had got over the monetary con- 
 vulsions of the Kegency and the reign of George IV., 
 
 1 Rural Rules and Drives, p. 274.
 
 THE FARMERS. 127 
 
 a period of great prosperity followed, and it was the 
 younger generation of farmers, who grew up to man- 
 hood about the middle of the present century, with 
 whom the luxuries and elegancies so severely censured 
 by a somewhat inconsiderate class of critics origi- 
 nated. I cannot altogether join in these reproaches. 
 The smart dog-cart, the well-bred hunter, the claret, 
 the piano, the governess, the silk dresses, and the 
 last new novel, were not reprehensible in themselves. 
 There is no reason why men should not have these 
 things, simply because they are agriculturists ; and 
 if the farmers fell into the error of supposing that 
 their good fortune would last for ever, and that there 
 was no necessity to make provision for a rainy day, 
 they only did what many other people of various 
 occupations and pursuits in life are guilty of doing 
 every hour, without drawing down upon themselves 
 any marked sarcasm or censure. It might be said, 
 perhaps, that all classes in England have been living 
 too expensively during the last fifty years, and that 
 country gentlemen are paying the penalty of their 
 imprudence as well as their tenants. 
 
 The tenant-farmer of the new style has been so
 
 128 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 often described, that it is miiiecessfiiy to paint him 
 over again in any detail. He " set up for a gentle- 
 man," as the labourers used to say, and played the 
 part with varying propriety, according to his natural 
 tact and taste, and the kind of education he had 
 received. The degree in which he succeeded in rais- 
 incj himself towards the level of the class above him 
 would depend to some extent, of course, on the 
 character of the neighbourhood in which he lived, 
 and the number and quality of the gentry who took 
 the lead in it. But it would be a mistake to suppose 
 that all the young farmers who, five-and-thirty or 
 forty years ago, began to ride valuable horses, drink 
 expensive wines, and smoke choice cigars, did so 
 with the view of making themselves more like 
 gentlemen. The majority of them, I think, had too 
 much sense for that. They had these things because 
 they were good in themselves, and they saw no 
 reason for hoarding their money instead of spending 
 it. But of that social ambition which is said to 
 agitate mercantile and commercial circles, I have 
 never myself seen much evidence among the farmers. 
 They were quite contented, I think, with the society
 
 THE FARMERS. 129 
 
 of their own class, and acquiesced in existing dis- 
 tinctions not only without any irritation, but with- 
 out the slightest desire to rebel against them. 
 
 In one particular this was very marked. Let us go 
 to the cover-side and take a glance at the assembled 
 sportsmen. There is the gentleman on his handsome 
 hunter, with perfect appointments ; his boots and 
 buckskins, his scarlet coat, his tie, his pin, all exactly 
 as they ought to be. Talking to him is a good-look- 
 ing young man, nearly if not quite as well mounted 
 as himself, and nearly if not quite as well dressed. 
 He is quite as good a rider, and the fox to-day will 
 in all probability be found upon his own farm. But 
 there is a line drawn between them which the latter 
 knows to be impassable. He cannot wear a red 
 coat. He would like to wear one, and would no 
 doubt look very well in one. But he knows per- 
 fectly well that "it wouldn't do," — that it would 
 only make him look ridiculous ; and he never frets 
 or chafes for a moment under a dispensation which 
 seems to him like a natural law. Similarly, I don't 
 believe that such men have ever pined for admit- 
 tance into what is called "county society," either
 
 130 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 for tlieinselves, their wives, or tlieir daughters ; and 
 when we hear them accused of having aped a style 
 of living unsuitable to their position, and of having 
 given themselves airs for which now they have to 
 pay the piper, we must remember, after all, that 
 in the majority of instances tliey only intended to 
 enjoy themselves, and were not chargeable, as a 
 rule, witli any contemptible eagerness to thrust 
 themselves into a higher class. When the rustic 
 said of such a man that he was " setting up for a 
 gentleman," he was sarcastic, and meant that he 
 would have done much better to spend less upon 
 himself, and more upon his land and his labourers' 
 wages. He did not necessarily mean that the culprit 
 was looking forward to an invitation to dinner from 
 the Duke, or an alliance with his landlord's daughter. 
 We are now speaking of men whose fathers, 
 grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had been far- 
 mers before them — men who were thoroughly im- 
 bued with all the traditions of their class, and 
 perfectly satisfied with the social conditions which 
 surrounded them. ]]ut of course there were others. 
 The system of farming- pupils has something per-
 
 THE FAEMERS. 131 
 
 haps to answer for. It used to be said that the 
 fool of the family was sent into the army. That 
 is not the case now, if it ever was. But though 
 I do not mean to say that parents often resolved 
 to make the fool of the family a farmer, I tliink 
 they sometimes fancied that a hoy who either 
 could or would do nothing else, might be bribed 
 to work a little at farming by the prospect which 
 it afibrded him of good living, an out-of-door life, 
 and plenty of field-sports. Nine times out of ten 
 the lad took all the fun and shirked all the work, 
 and was probably no very good companion for the 
 young farmers in the neighbourhood. They ac- 
 quired expensive tastes and idle habits from him ; 
 while his agricultural tutor, who received an ample 
 fee with him, made it a point of honour to keep 
 what was called " a liberal table," and to indulge 
 in luxuries which, if left to himself, he would have 
 thought beyond his station. The farmer's wife 
 was specially fond of this system ; for if she had 
 daughters, the pupil would naturally take one of 
 them off her hands, and she in turn would send 
 others to do the same kind office for her sisters.
 
 132 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 Occasionally such families got ratlier a bad rep- 
 utation in the neighbourhood, and the labourers 
 would tell you with a grin how young 80-and-so 
 " got zucked in " by Farmer Plant's lady at the 
 Grange. " Be you a-gooing to stay there ? " perhaps 
 he would add ; and if you answered in the affirma- 
 tive, would grin a little wider. If you asked him 
 what he meant, he would only say, "Well, you'll 
 'ev to be smart like." The pupil business, how- 
 ever, is now said to be played out.^ Men don't 
 send their sons, even the idle ones, to learn a losing- 
 trade at a large cost; and what is gradually be- 
 coming of the tutorial farmers, with their horses 
 and guns, their elegant daughters and their late 
 dinners, I do not profess to understand. Some 
 still remain, I suppose, but in too many places 
 vacant farms and empty farndiouses, and gardens 
 overgrown with weeds, tell plainly that their day 
 is over ; and that the age of pleasure-farming — 
 of work and play combined in very unequal pro- 
 portions — is gone for ever. 
 
 ^ See an excellent article in the ' St Jauies'« Gazette,' October 
 26, 1889.
 
 THE FAEMERS. 133 
 
 One is very sorry for individuals ; but I am not 
 sure that the catastrophe which has overtaken them 
 is an unmixed evil. There was somethinr>- artificial 
 in the social efflorescence of the agricultural class 
 during what has been called the champagne age. 
 I have already pointed out that much of the sar- 
 casm to which farmers have been exposed, in con- 
 sequence of the tastes and habits then acquired, 
 is undeserved ; that, in fact, they have not lieen 
 worse than other people. But at the same time, 
 their prosperity depended upon two conditions, one 
 of which was always precarious, while it might 
 have been seen that the otlier was in the nature 
 of things only temporary — I mean, the existence 
 of Protection and the absence of competition. The 
 withdrawal of the one, followed at no lono; interval 
 by the extension of the other, has produced its 
 logical results. Some say that protection, in some 
 shape or another, is sure to be revived ; others that, 
 in less than another generation, American com- 
 petition, at all events, will cease to be formidable. 
 But it can hardly help occurring to any impartial 
 looker-on that it would be better for all parties
 
 134 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 if Englisli agriculture could be placed on such a 
 footing as would make it independent of either. 
 This is what I should call a natural and healthy 
 footing. I am not writing either as a political 
 economist or a scientific agriculturist ; Ijut I think 
 common-sense is enough to teach us this, that if 
 the style of living adopted by a numerous class 
 of English farmers during the second half of the 
 nineteenth century requires to be supported by 
 laws to which a large part of the nation would 
 always be hostile, and is incompatible with that 
 foreign competition which, though it may possibly 
 subside at some remote period, must continue to 
 confront us for very many years to come, the sooner 
 it is exchanged for a system that can dispense with 
 such supports the better. 
 
 Of the actual economical position of the English 
 farmer at the present moment, it is impossible to 
 procure the details with sufficient accuracy to war- 
 rant any lengthened description. It seems to be 
 generally admitted that he can no longer continue 
 to live in tlie style to which he has lately grown 
 accustomed; and the great question is, whether he
 
 THE FARMERS. 135 
 
 can continue to live at all upon the land, even if 
 he returns to that simpler and more frugal mode 
 of life which prevailed at a much earlier period ? 
 On the answer to this question it depends whether 
 the tenant-farmer is still to continue a conspicuous 
 and important member of the village community, 
 a link between the gentry and the peasantry, of 
 which the value in past times has been incal- 
 culable ; or whether he is gradually to fade out 
 of the system, leaving the land to the aristocracy 
 and the peasantry, to be cultivated either on a 
 larger scale by the former, or on a smaller scale 
 by the latter. 
 
 After the many changes which our old rural life 
 has already undergone, and in view of the many 
 more which it yet seems doomed to undergo, the 
 disappearance of the middle -class tenant-farmer 
 from among the constituent elements of rural 
 society cannot, I fear, be regarded as impossible. 
 But I confess I do not think it probable. It does 
 not seem to me that the wholesale substitution of 
 petty culture, whether by the hands of owners 
 or occupiers, for our existing agricultural system,
 
 136 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 leaving no intermediate link between the peasantry 
 and the gentry, is within measurable distance. An 
 American agriculturist said to me but a few months 
 ago, — " AVhy, put down an American farmer on two 
 hundred acres of clay land in your Cambridgeshire 
 or Essex, at a pound an acre, and he would not only 
 make a living out of it — he would grow rich upon 
 it." And I think it has certainly not yet been 
 proved that if the occupier of two or three hundred 
 acres returned to the style of living which was 
 universal among men of his class in the reign of 
 George II., and till the middle of the reign of Georg6 
 III., they could not live upon the land. The style of 
 living among the gentry must be altered too : the 
 two classes must lower their expenditure together. 
 Eight thousand a-year must come back to five, 
 and five thousand a-year to three. And though 
 I do not presume to speak with confidence of the 
 result, yet I think it will be owned that the ex- 
 periment has not yet been tried upon a large scale, 
 and that it is worth a trial, llents, of course, have 
 in numerous instances been remitted or reduced. 
 But country gentlemen must make up their minds
 
 THE FAEMRRS. 137 
 
 to a permanently different mode of life, if the old 
 distribution of classes is to remain intact. In that 
 case, I think, with a homelier and less showy class 
 of tenantry, and a class of gentry retaining all their 
 culture while parting with some of their luxuries, 
 country life might still be conducted on the old 
 model, in spite of county councils — which, it is 
 hoped, will disappoint the Radicals — and other 
 plausible nostrums, which they might perhaps 
 turn to better account. 
 
 That it may be so, I for one most heartily and 
 earnestly desire. Let us try to picture to ourselves 
 an Ennland from which the tenant-farmers — not 
 only the Woolcomes and their like, but their 
 modern representatives — had disappeared. Let us 
 try to think of English villages in which the half- 
 dozen substantial farmhouses, with the comfortable 
 farmyards, barns, and ricks, were no longer to be 
 seen ; of the village church, from which the old 
 well-known figures of Farmer Giles, and Farmer 
 Goodman, and Farmer Whitehead, were gone for 
 ever. Xone but those who know what an English 
 village of the old stamp really is, will perhaps
 
 138 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 fully appreciate all that these words imply. In 
 the first place, they mean the loss of a ])ody of 
 men who have hitherto taken a large share in the 
 administration of local affairs, and for whom it 
 would be difficult to find efficient substitutes. If 
 the present race of farmers vanish, and in their 
 place we have only a multitude of petty cultiva- 
 tors, with a few very big agriculturists scattered 
 about here and there — the plums at the top of the 
 pudding — who is to assist the gentry and the clergy 
 in the conduct of country business ? The electors, 
 in the case we are supposing, will be obliged to 
 choose the attorney and the shopkeeper from the 
 nearest town, in default of anybody else with the 
 requisite education and intelligence — men ignorant 
 of rural matters, and of the real wants and true 
 interests of the peasantry. More than that, parish 
 affairs will have to be managed by somebody. 
 Neither county councils nor district councils will 
 do away with the necessity for that ; and who is to 
 manage them if there are no farmers in the parish 
 above the rank of a peasant ? 
 
 But the man who would miss the farmers most
 
 THE FARMEKS. 139 
 
 of all would he tlie clergyman. There are farmers 
 who are Dissenters, and a few who, being such, 
 do all they can to thwart the parson. But, as a 
 general rule, the principal farmers in the parish 
 are the clergyman's most efficient helpers. They 
 are independent men, and speak their minds about 
 ritualism, or anything else which offends them, 
 with perfect freedom. But a man of this kind 
 is often the clergyman's right-hand man for all 
 that, subscribes liberally to the school, looks after 
 the Church-rate, and helps to keep up what is 
 called " a good feeling " in the parish generally. 
 He takes a good deal of parish business off the 
 parson's hands, helps him in works of charity, 
 carries coal for the poor at Christmas, and can 
 often give useful advice and useful information, 
 not otherwise easily procured, relating to the 
 labourers and their families. In short, he does a 
 great deal towards making it possible for gentlemen 
 to exist upon their livings, with glebe and tithe in 
 their present unsatisfactory condition. The farmer's 
 wife is the best ally of the clergyman's wife. She 
 helps in the village clothing-club, in the school and
 
 140 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 in tlio choir; and she, too, conveys a good deal of 
 information to the parsonage, of which its inhabi- 
 tants might have long remained in ignorance. That 
 farmers of this class are able to help tlieir own 
 labonrers in case of sickness or accident in a way 
 which, to the man of fifty acres, would be impos- 
 sible, "goes without saying." Finally, it may be 
 added that the greater number of classes of which 
 society consists, the greater its stability and steadi- 
 ness, the greater room for the play of individual 
 peculiarities, and the greater the security for the 
 freedom and independence of minorities. 
 
 I don't think that any form of Dissent has ever 
 prevailed very largely among the English farmers. 
 In the old days, when the Church was to some 
 extent unmindful of her pastoral duties. Dissent 
 spread among the poor, because religion of some 
 kind was necessary to them ; and it is still. Those 
 who go much among the London poor tell us that 
 they cling to Christianity in some shape as the one 
 great solace of their lot. And Methodism responded 
 to a want which the Church at one time only very 
 partially sujjplied. But it was scarcely felt by the
 
 THE FAUMEKS. 141 
 
 farmers, with whom Dissent usually originated in a 
 spirit of opposition, or a desire to spite somebody. 
 If, according to our elegant euphemism, " any 
 unpleasantness " arose between a farmer and his 
 landlord on the question of tithes or rabbits, the 
 former would take to going to chapel as the only 
 way of paying him out. If the clergyman admon- 
 ished him, or wounded the best feelings of his 
 nature by thwarting him in the matter of pews 
 — helli teterrima causa in country places — he did 
 the same thing. But I doubt if he was often led 
 thither by the wants of his spiritual nature. Once 
 there, however, things were made very agreeable to 
 him. He was caressed and Mattered, and found 
 himself a great man ; and so the secession, which 
 began in pique, was prolonged by vanity, and the 
 Dissenters gained a new convert. But I should 
 very much question whether he ever felt any pref- 
 erence for the chapel over the church on purely 
 religious grounds. 
 
 I think, however, it must be admitted that where 
 a farmer of the old school had any theological bias 
 at all, it was slightly in favour of the Evangelical
 
 142 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 party. As a general rule, it did not occur to Inni 
 to have any views at all upon such subjects. But 
 he liked now and then a sensational sermon, as 
 we like sensational novels ; and the mysterious 
 imagery of the Old Testament, combined with its 
 intense human interest, had the same charm for 
 him as it has for all people, I suppose, whose 
 tastes liave not been spoiled by education. Now 
 the Evangelical clergy, in the days I am thinking 
 of, were strong upon the Pentateuch ; and I re- 
 member one who was very popular with village 
 congregations because of his knowledge of " the 
 types." An old man being reminded of him the 
 other day, by a friend of the writer, showed what 
 an impression every particular had made upon 
 him. " Ah, sir," he said, " he wur oncommon good 
 upon the types, specially the red heifer." "Whether 
 the fact of his living in a grazing country had 
 caused this particular display of hermeneutic science 
 to come home to him witli peculiar force or not, 
 I don't know. But that was the one thing that he 
 remembered. There was, however, one religious 
 feeling which burnt licreely in the middle classes
 
 THE FARMERS. 143 
 
 sixty years ago, and does still, and to which I have 
 already referred. The British farmer, in common 
 with the whole body of the English middle class, 
 had always been brought np in intense horror 
 of Ptomanism. The Eoman Catholic Emancipation 
 Act was not, as he knew, the fault of the English 
 clergy. But they had been unable to prevent it ; 
 and one reason for his attachment to the National 
 Church was gone. On the top of this rock of 
 offence came the Tractarian movement, which woke 
 his religious antipathies into new life, and wounded 
 at the same time his religious conservatism. The 
 levelling of the tall pews ; the introduction of the 
 surplice into the pulpit ; the substitution of the 
 harmonium or the organ for the fifes, flutes, trom- 
 bones, and all kinds of music,^ to which he had 
 been accustomed from his childhood ; the service 
 on saints' days ; the chanting, and the intoning, — 
 were a severe shock to the farmer of sixty years 
 of age, wlio had grown grey in the corner of his 
 big pew, and whose dignity was hurt by being 
 placed on a level with the common people. I 
 
 ^ These are being gradually restored.
 
 1-U THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 have heard of such a man being taken sutUlenly 
 ill, and obliged to leave the church, the first time 
 he witnessed some of these startling innovations. 
 Yet the great majority of them stood the strain 
 very well, and remained faithful to the Church. 
 And now a new generation has grown up familiar 
 with the new system, and, I believe, partial to it. 
 Yet still the feeling of the farmers towards the 
 Church, however friendly, is not exactly what it 
 was. They support the Church because they them- 
 selves like her services, and understand the advan- 
 tages of an Establishment. But I doubt if they 
 still look upon her with that kind of unquestioning 
 veneration which animated their forefathers, when 
 she was accepted as an inseparable part of the 
 whole constitution of the country, the removal of 
 which would be a moral and political convulsion 
 too vast for their understandings to embrace. 
 
 The tithe question, which has revived again in 
 our day, is quite a separate one. If the pinch of 
 poverty has made the farmer impatient of legal 
 obligation, and anxious to appropriate property 
 which belongs to somebody else, it is from no
 
 THE FARMERS. 145 
 
 aversion either to the Church or the clergy. He 
 is desperate, and all due allowance must be made 
 for the excesses of desperation. I should be afraid, 
 however, that if the tithe question is kept open much 
 longer, it may tend more and more to familiarise 
 tlie farmer with the idea of disestablishment — not 
 out of hostility to the Church, but from an idea 
 that everybody should be allowed to give what he 
 likes. The farmers, of course, really give nothing, 
 and the whole share of the produce of the soil to 
 which they are entitled, they still receive. Tithe 
 is no more "a gift" to the Church than rent is 
 to the landlord. I believe the majority of the 
 farmers see the truth through all their vexation 
 and confusion, and that all they want is a pro- 
 portionate reduction of tithe. But there is cer- 
 tainly a minority who are gradually fanning them- 
 selves into a feeling of opposition to the principle, 
 and who are heard to say that they would pay 
 twice as much as their tithe to support the 
 Church of England, if she waived her claim to it 
 of right. 
 
 I have little to add to what I have already said 
 
 E
 
 146 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 of the farmer's ideas about the land. He tinds 
 himself in a desperate predicament, and naturally 
 looks round for somebody on whom he can throw 
 the blame. He is hurt and angry, but is loath to 
 be angry with himself. Like a wounded animal, 
 he will turn upon his best friends. Here is no 
 cause either for wonder or reproach. As he sees 
 "his noble industry, the invention of gods and 
 the occupation of heroes," ^ rapidly giving way 
 beneath his feet, we need not be surprised that 
 he grows irritable, suspicious, and credulous; 
 listens to the wildest nostrums, and clings vainly 
 to the hope that, by some change of tenure or 
 some legislative interference, the mischief which 
 has been wrought by inevitable natural laws 
 may be undone, and his old prosperity restored. 
 Some still think a cure is to be found in in- 
 creased security of tenure. But, waiving the 
 question whether increased security of tenure could 
 really do for the existing race of tenant-farmers 
 what some of them imagine that it would, we 
 have still to consider that there are many large 
 
 ^ Lord Beacon.sfield.
 
 THE FAEMEKS. 147 
 
 landed proprietors who, sooner than part with all 
 control over their own estates, or sink into the 
 position of annuitants, would turn farmers them- 
 selves and solve the problem in that fashion. If 
 the contention is true on which this demand is 
 based — namely, that with increased security, farm- 
 ing could still be made profitable, even with rent 
 to be paid — it is manifest that the landowner, who 
 has no rent to pay, whose security is absolute, 
 and who, in regard to capital, must, as a general 
 rule, be in quite as favourable a position as the 
 tenant-farmer, would be strongly tempted to try 
 the experiment himself. 
 
 The landed proprietors of England are badly off 
 just now, no doubt ; but by their own showing the 
 farmers are still worse off. What can they do 
 with increased security of tenure, which their land- 
 lords could not do much better ? Of course there 
 is another way out of the situation, though it is 
 not one which can be agreeable for the farmers 
 to contemplate. If all that is wanted to restore 
 the prosperity of English agriculture is a fair field 
 for the safe investment of capital, the rich man
 
 U8 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 may coiik3 in from the outside with more money 
 than either landlord or tenant, and make terms 
 with the owner which he might be only too glad 
 to accept. Suppose the farms on any large estate 
 to be taken up by an individual or a company as 
 a purely commercial undertaking, many causes of 
 friction which now exist between owner and oc- 
 cupier would be absent. Social jealousies, sport- 
 ing jealousies, ecclesiastical difficulties would all 
 disappear. The landlord would have whatever 
 he chose to pay for, without any grumbling or 
 ill-feeling. T, for one, have no desire at all to see 
 such a change take place. I should deeply regret 
 it. liut it is one of the possibilities of the future 
 on which the farmers would do well to ponder. 
 If the old relations between landlord and tenant, 
 between farmer and labourer, are all to be swept 
 away — and I am told I am much too optimistic in 
 expecting anything else — the consummation I have 
 here indicated is not much more improbable than 
 others which the landed interest has been taught 
 to anticipate. It is a little so — because the man 
 who was looking only to commercial results with-
 
 THE FAKMERS. U9 
 
 out any eye to the pleasures or the dignity of a 
 landed proprietor, could find many more profitable 
 investments for his money than agriculture. Still, 
 it is one of those possibilities which have to be taken 
 into account in considering the future of English 
 farmers. 
 
 It will be observed that there is a broad line of 
 demarcation to be drawn between the discontent 
 of the farmer with the existing state of things 
 
 o o 
 
 and the discontent of the peasantry. The former 
 is due almost exclusively to the bad times, very 
 slightly flavoured on particular estates with some 
 traditional soreness about game. But since the 
 Act of 1880 this feeling has almost totally dis- 
 appeared, and the English farmers are even call- 
 ing out for some modification of the Act, in the 
 shape of a close time for hares. Farmers are 
 born sportsmen ; and it requires only the exercise 
 of a little courtesy and forbearance by the land- 
 lords to secure the absence of any trouble upon 
 this score. The mainspring of tlie farmer's dis- 
 content is pecuniary. He has no social ambition 
 or social jealousy to gratify. He would be only
 
 150 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 too happy to continue to be a farmer, and is 
 pricked by no cravings after any higher kind of 
 existence. The agricultural labourer is tired of 
 being an agricultural labourer. He sighs for a 
 different kind of life, with more excitement, more 
 possibilities, more opportunities. The farmer's dis- 
 satisfaction springs chiefly from material causes ; 
 the labourer's from moral. 
 
 But there are certain general truths which may 
 be predicted of both alike. Our political action is 
 necessarily largely regulated by our material in- 
 terests and our immediate wants, and the lower 
 we descend in the social scale, the more al;)Sorbing 
 do these wants and interests become, and the less 
 do they admit of being modified by higher or more 
 remote considerations. The most transient and 
 superficial antagonism between these primary ne- 
 cessities, and measures based on any scientific 
 or pliilosophic social principle wliich appears to 
 clash with them, is sufficient to condemn the 
 latter in the minds of uneducated men. It is 
 difficult, therefore, to regard without anxiety the 
 transfer of power from the more cultivated and en-
 
 THE FARMERS. 151 
 
 lightened to the more ignorant and illiterate classes 
 which is now in progress in the English counties. 
 The territorial aristocracy occupy a very different 
 position from that of the commercial aristocracy. 
 The only hostility which the latter have to fear from 
 their work-people in the towns is based on economic 
 grounds. No class is in arms against them but such 
 as are at war w4th capital. A majority even of the 
 Eadical and Liberal party is on their side. But the 
 landowners are assailed not only because they are 
 monopolists, but because they are patricians. They 
 are exposed to a converging fire from the enemies 
 of wealth and the enemies of birth alike. Should 
 the peasantry who have taken the Radical shilling 
 show any signs of flagging, there is always a con- 
 tingent at hand to egg them on to fresh efforts, or 
 denounce them as degraded and spiritless. In other 
 words, the aristocracy have to reckon with the or- 
 ganised forces of a powerful political party, as well 
 as with the fitful and sporadic discontent of their 
 own immediate dependants. It is, however, en- 
 couraging to perceive that some effort is to be made 
 to retain the administration of the new system in
 
 152 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the hands of the same class of men who so suc- 
 cessfully administered the old one. The local aris- 
 tocracy and the better class of farmers are every- 
 where coming forward to claim their proper place 
 in the remodelled county constitution ; and if their 
 claims are recognised, as in the first instance they 
 probably will be, much of the apprehended evil 
 may be either averted, neutralised, or postponed. 
 
 The relations between the gentry and the farmers 
 may not be all that could be wished; and I am 
 assured that in some rural districts the farmers, 
 as a rule, will assume a hostile attitude towards 
 the magistrates under the new system which is 
 now about to be inaugurated. I cannot speak 
 with any certainty on this point myself; but I 
 shall be surprised to learn that such feelings are 
 at all general. I believe there are parts of the 
 country where the farmers are under some vague 
 impression that the country gentlemen might have 
 done more for them, though goodness knows exactly 
 what it is that they are thinking of, liut I have 
 no expectation that tliey will offer any organised 
 opposition to the claims of the country gentlemen
 
 THE FAEMERS. 153 
 
 to take a principal part, as tliey have always 
 clone, in the management of county business, and 
 to be looked up to by the rural population as 
 their natural leaders. Other people may, but 
 not tlie farmers. There will be isolated cases of 
 antagonism, I have no doubt. There are rifts 
 and flaws in the agricultural and territorial fabric, 
 I am aware, which make me say that the relation 
 between its component classes are not all that 
 could be desired. But I believe that, on the whole, 
 its main walls are still sound and solid, and that, 
 for anything the farmers are likely to do, it may, 
 with a few judicious repairs, weather many storms 
 yet. 
 
 Much, no doubt, has passed away which will 
 never return. The combined effects of agricul- 
 tural depression and Radical agitation have worked 
 a revolution in the course of twenty years which, 
 under ordinary circumstances, it might have taken 
 near a century to effect. But quite enough of the 
 old system still remains to make it worth while to 
 keep up the struggle in support of it.
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 
 
 " Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 
 
 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke : 
 How jocund did they drive tlieir team afield ! 
 How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! " 
 
 T HAVE often thought that in these lines we have 
 -*- represented to us the three most characteristic 
 and picturesque operations of rural industry — 
 ploughing the ground, reaping the harvest, and 
 felling the timber in the brown autumn woodlands. 
 Throwing ourselves for a moment into the spirit of 
 the poet, we see the sturdy English peasant going 
 forth to his work in the fresh early morning, well 
 clothed, well fed, cheerful and contented: out at 
 the farmyard gates, past the rugged elms and the
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 155 
 
 ivy-niautled tower, across the brook, and up to the 
 accustomed liill, there to labour steadily till the 
 declining sun warns him to unyoke his weary 
 liorses and brinu; thein back with loosened traces 
 to the old moss-grown stable. We watch him 
 shouldering his sickle under the bright and dewy 
 August sunrise, and speeding over the dank green- 
 sward for a long day among the yellow corn till the 
 moon is high in heaven. Or we follow him to the 
 November woods, ankle-deep in dead leaves, sur- 
 rounded by fallen trunks — a scene that Linnell 
 loved — and wielding his axe with right good will 
 against the oak, the ash, or the beech, till the 
 waning light warns him to plod home again to his 
 cottage on the edge of the common, with its garden 
 and its orchard, its pigsty, its cowshed, and its hen- 
 roost, to eat his bacon and potatoes by the fireside, 
 and hear the village news till it is time for him to 
 tumble into bed, tired, happy, with a ^ood consci- 
 ence, and without a care. 
 
 Such is the picture which it requires no effort 
 of the imagination to conjure up before us as we 
 read these well-known stanzas, written some hun-
 
 15G THE OLD AND THE NEW, 
 
 dred and forty years ago — tor we are entitled to 
 believe that they represent only the actual truth. 
 They recall to us a time when, according to Mr 
 Hallani, the tillers of the soil in England lived in 
 great comfort, when the " happy peasant " pursued 
 the even tenor of his way, with enough for all 
 his humble wants, and asking no more ; catching 
 only at intervals faint murmurs from the outside 
 world through the waggoner or the post-boy ; with 
 elbow-room for himself and his children, and the 
 prospect of a decent support in his old age, without 
 misery or disgrace ; when the whole country life 
 of England basked in a kind of afternoon repose, 
 and rural felicity was not entirely a dream. 
 
 Why should it be so now ? and is it, indeed, 
 really so ? No doubt, between the end of the reign 
 of George II. and the close of the American war 
 there is a great gulf fixed. During this interval 
 prices rose without any corresponding rise in wages : 
 and although too great stress may have been laid 
 on the numerous Enclosure Acts which were passed 
 in the early part of George III.'s reign — since the 
 more land that was brought under tillage, the more
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 157 
 
 employment there would be — still the fact remains 
 that these Acts did deprive the peasantry of the 
 commons, and swallow up at the same time various 
 little hits of waste ground which they had made 
 their own. The French war found them with 
 crippled resources, ill prepared to face the new 
 troubles that awaited them. Mr Pitt had a scheme 
 for their relief, which, like all his schemes, was 
 bold and comprehensive, but which would rather 
 hurt the feelings of modern ratepayers and shock 
 the prejudices of modern political economists. He 
 proposed that industrial schools should be estab- 
 lished in all the villages of the kingdom, and that 
 the parish officer should be empowered to levy the 
 necessary rates ; and, what is more to the present 
 purpose, that any person entitled to receive parish 
 relief might take a lump sum in advance to en- 
 able him or her to buy a cow or a pig, or pay the 
 rent of a small plot of ground. 
 
 The pressure of foreign affairs prevented Pitt 
 from proceeding any further with his scheme ; and 
 instead of it, an Act was passed in 1795 empower- 
 ing the parish authorities to give relief in aid of
 
 158 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 wages to able-bodied men. The remedy was worse 
 than the disease ; and matters became so intolerable 
 in the course of forty years, that the new poor-law, 
 rushing into the opposite extreme, was the natural 
 result. Many people thought that, instead of break- 
 ing up the old parochial system, it would have been 
 quite sufficient to repeal the Act of 1795, before 
 which time no complaints had been made, either 
 of the mode in which the law was administered, 
 or the influence which it exercised on the people. 
 Of the bitter hatred with which the new system 
 was regarded by the agricultural poor for many 
 years after its first introduction, I retain a lively 
 recollection. I remember, as a child, being puzzled 
 at hearing the workhouse called the " bastyle " by 
 the village labourers, with a strong emphasis on 
 the second syllable; and I have always believed 
 that it was the first thing which disturbed to any 
 serious extent the old feelings of amity and 
 loyalty between the peasantry and the gentry. 
 
 The old system was marked by grave abuses. But 
 it was not one, as Mr Canning used to say, to be 
 abolished with a light heart ; and he attributed
 
 THE PEASANTEY. 159 
 
 the peace and prosperity of England and the loyalty 
 of the people during many very trying periods 
 mainly to the existence of the old poor-law, which 
 gave them a hold upon the land and attached them 
 to the gentry, who were really relieving them out of 
 their own pockets. I am not aware that the peas- 
 antry in those days were a peculiarly abject race, or 
 deficient in independence and self-respect. Before 
 the Act of 1795 they certainly would have contrasted 
 very favourably in this respect with the labourers 
 of to-day. This Act had the very opposite effect to 
 that which was expected from it. An old labourer 
 in Gloucestershire told one of the Commissioners in 
 1834 that he had often heard his father-in-law say, 
 " What a sad change there was now going on in the 
 parish ! and that he remembered the time when a 
 man would rather starve than apply: but that 
 nowadays a man was more employed because he 
 went on the parish, than because he was indus- 
 trious and tried to keep off." 
 
 '. It seems reasonable to believe, therefore, that the 
 Act of 1834 went beyond the necessities of the case. 
 Under the old system outdoor relief was granted on
 
 160 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 a magistrate's order, uud this created a close and 
 intimate connection between the landed proprietors 
 and the poor, which had existed for centuries, and 
 which it should have been the first o1)ject of Con- 
 servative statesmen to defend. Men's minds, how- 
 ever, were in no mood for moderate measures, and 
 a blow was then struck at our old rural constitution, 
 from which it has never entirely recovered. 
 
 During the whole of this time, and for some 
 years afterwards, the agricultural interest, in spite 
 of the corn laws, was very much depressed, and the 
 labourers were very badly off. Eick-burning and 
 machine-burning became common : and it was not 
 until the social and monetary system of the country 
 — deranged, firstly, by the long war, and secondly, 
 by the peace which put an end to it — gradually 
 righted itself, that the murmurs of agrarian discon- 
 tent began to die away, or were lost in the louder 
 wail of of the factory operative. 
 
 From about the year 1840 down to the great agri- 
 cultural strike of 1870, the world heard little of the 
 agricultural labourer. The interest of the philan- 
 thropical public now became concentrated on the
 
 THE PEASANTRY. IGl 
 
 artisan class, on the truck system, and on factory 
 tyranny. But after these grievances had been re- 
 dressed and political rights conferred upon town 
 populations by the bill of 1867, the public had 
 leisure to turn once more to the condition of the 
 peasantry. Although this was still far from satis- 
 factory, it was evident that during the last thirty 
 years their position had been steadily improving. 
 In some of the English counties, the south-western 
 counties especially, they had made perhaps but 
 little progress. Elsewhere, it may be doubted 
 whether they had not so far regained the ground 
 lost during the dreary interval I have mentioned — 
 that is, from about 1815 to 1840 — as to reinvest 
 the old-fashioned conception of rustic happiness 
 with some tints of its original reality. In the year 
 1847, Mr Frederick Clifford visited East Anglia as 
 correspondent for the ' Times ' newspaper, just when 
 the quarrel between farmers and labourers was at 
 its height. His letters were published afterwards 
 in a volume styled the ' Agricultural Look-out ' ; 
 and in the tenth chapter of that book will be found 
 a description of the peasantry which strongly con-
 
 162 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 firms the supposition. Tlie peasantry of the eastern 
 counties were not exceptionally well off. And what 
 was true of them then, is still more true of them 
 now. But Mr Clifford concludes this chapter with 
 the following words : — 
 
 " A few visits paid by intelligent working men in towns 
 to an average country village would do them more good 
 than joining a mob of holiday excursionists to the seaside, 
 and would probably dispel some illusions about rural serfs 
 and their brutal oppressors. I doubt also Avhether the 
 sight of pretty roomy cottages, gardens gay with flowers, 
 well -cropped allotments, leafy lanes, and green fields, 
 would not send a good many back to town regretting that 
 their lines had not fallen in such pleasant places, or, at all 
 events, feeling that rural life, if the reward of labour be 
 small, has many and great compensations." 
 
 These words were written fourteen years ago ; 
 and now that a new future seems to he opening 
 before the agricultural labourer, it may be well per- 
 haps to take another glance at his progress, and learn 
 what we can of his material welfare, his character, 
 and his aspirations at this particular moment. The 
 late Mr Jefferies has given us in ' Hodge and his 
 Masters ' a fairly complete account of the peasantry
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 163 
 
 of the soutlierii counties. But that was written 
 nearly ten years ago, and events have moved rapidly 
 in the interval. There are, too, some phases of 
 English rural life which did not come quite within 
 the range of his vision ; or, at all events, which he 
 did not understand so well as others : and I doubt 
 whether any one, anxious to foretell the future of 
 the English counties, would be justified in relying 
 exclusively on the data supplied by this ingenious 
 and picturesque writer. 
 
 The first thing to be done is to obtain a general, 
 but as far as possible an exact, view of the physical 
 and economical condition of the labourer at this 
 present moment. That must be the basis of all 
 further inquiries. When we know that, we have 
 firm ground to stand upon, and can pursue our 
 speculations on his moral and intellectual charac- 
 teristics in comparative security. With regard to 
 his material condition, something like certainty is 
 attainable : and I must protest at the outset against 
 that method of criticism which proceeds on the 
 assumption that all statements of this nature are 
 more or less ingenious guesses, and that none of
 
 164 THE OLD AND THE NEW, 
 
 them are based on actually ascertained facts. In the 
 very brief survey of the labourer's material position, 
 which is all that it will be necessary to lay before the 
 reader in this chapter, all conclusions not deduced 
 from official sources are derived partly from per- 
 sonal experience, partly from answers to questions 
 addressed directly by myself to residents in the 
 country, and in some instances to those who have 
 worked as day-labourers themselves.^ 
 
 The latest official information on the whole 
 subject is to be found in the evidence taken be- 
 fore the Duke of Richmond's Commission, 1879- 
 1882, and the reports thereunto annexed. Another 
 very useful work is ' The History and Present 
 Condition of the Allotment System' (1886), by the 
 Earl of Onslow. And the information contained 
 in them I have myself supplemented, as already 
 stated, by direct personal inquiries in the spring 
 of 1887.^ One cannot stereotype the condition of 
 any class : wages and prices may differ a little 
 to-day from what they were fifteen months ago : 
 
 1 See ' The Agricultural Labourer.' T.y T. E. Kebbel. Allen & 
 Co. 1887. '^ Ibid.
 
 THE PEASANTKY. 165 
 
 but 110 sucli depression or deviation has occurred 
 on either side as to throw my account off its 
 balance and necessitate a fresh adjustment. 
 
 The title of the work of Mr Jefferies to which 
 I have just referred is, it may be observed, ' Hodge 
 and his Masters ' ; that is to say, it is a book about 
 farmers and landlords as well as about Hodge him- 
 self — in other words, about all three branches of 
 the agricultural interest. And he says himself in 
 his preface, "The labourer at the present moment 
 has the best of the bargain." I am anxious to 
 call particular attention to this point, because one 
 of my main objects will be to show that, in cal- 
 culating the line of conduct likely to be adopted 
 by the peasantry under the new responsibilities 
 thrown upon them — in striving to get behind 
 mere appearances, and to penetrate to their inner 
 motives,^ — we must allow no place in our account 
 for exceptional physical distress, or for any sense 
 of injustice provoked by a comparison of their 
 present lot with anything they have enjoyed within 
 
 ^ As the 'Spectator,' iu some comments ou the above-mentioued 
 work of miae, invited me to do.
 
 IGG THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 the reacli of rural memories or traditions. I must 
 ask my readers, therefore, to start with me (under 
 protest if they please) from this position — namely, 
 that the English peasantry arc in all material re- 
 spects better off now than they have been at any 
 time during the last hundred and twenty years — 
 and this not only absolutely but relatively, — better 
 off in proportion to the prosperity of the other 
 agricultural classes. 
 
 A very few pages will be sulficient to show 
 what grounds we have for arriving at this con- 
 clusion. But before entering upon particulars it 
 may not be unnecessary even now to caution the 
 reader once more against the common error of 
 confounding wages with income, and of supposing 
 that when the labourer has received his allotted 
 number of shillings on Saturday night he has 
 nothing more to depend on. His wages on an 
 average do not represent more than three-quarters 
 of his income. 
 
 Wages,^ perquisites, and agricultural customs 
 
 ^ 15y wages ai-e meant the weekly money which the hihourer 
 receives every Saturday night. By jjcrquisites are meant : 1. The
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 167 
 
 differ so greatly in various parts of England, that 
 a resident in the north, acquainted only with the 
 system prevailing in his own country, would very 
 likely be inclined at first sight to dispute the 
 accuracy of figures relating to the south and 
 south-west. But it appears, on the whole, that 
 the total yearly income of an ordinary English 
 day-labourer, including both wages and perquisites 
 of every kind, ranges from about £50 a-year in 
 Northumberland to a little over £30 in Wiltshire 
 and other south-western counties. This gives an 
 average of £40 a-year.^ But it is only the ex- 
 ceptionally low wages paid in a few counties which 
 pulls down the average even so low as this. In 
 the eastern, midland, northern, and south - east 
 counties it is commoner to find the sum - total 
 rising to £43 and £44 than sinking to £37 or 
 £38. Shepherds, waggoners, and stockmen are 
 
 difference between the rent which he pays for his cottage, and 
 the rent which it is really worth ; 2. Harvest-money ; 3. Beer ; 
 4. Faguts ; 5. Driving coals ; 6. Bacon ; 7. Potatoes ; and there 
 may be more, according to the different customs of different 
 counties. 
 
 ^ /.c, Average wages 12s. a-week ; value of perquisites about 4s. 
 a-week.
 
 168 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 paid at a higher rate; and their wages average 
 about £50 a-year.^ 
 
 Before the Education Act of 1870 came into 
 general operation,^ and when it was more usual 
 for women to work in the fields than it is now, 
 the earnings of the labourer's wife and family 
 made a considerable addition to his yearly income. 
 Where women are employed now, they earn from 
 4s. to 6s, a- week at ordinary times, and from 10s. 
 to 12s. in harvest. From juvenile labour, as boys 
 can usually get to work by the time they are 
 twelve or thirteen, I calculate the average addition 
 to the cottage income to be about £18 a -year. 
 Throw in an average of £2 a-year for the women, 
 which is certainly much below the mark, and that 
 gives a total average of £60 as the annual income 
 
 ^ Our authorities for these figures have beau given on the fore- 
 going page. They are the Report of tlie Duke of Richmond's 
 Commission, 1879-1882, especially Mr Druce's Table of Wages; a 
 paper in the ' Royal Agricultural Society's Journal,' by Mr Little, 
 1878 ; and thirty returns obtained by the present writer from 
 farmers and landowners in twenty-seven 'representative counties 
 in 1887. 
 
 2 The Commissioners in 1867 calculated that the withdrawal 
 from farm-work of children under ten years of age would involve 
 an average loss to the parents of £4 or £5 a-year.
 
 THE I'EASANTKY. 169 
 
 of an able-bodied English peasant, where he has 
 the help of wife and children. 
 
 Under the head of perquisites, I include cottages 
 and gardens, let to the labourer considerably below 
 their real value. But I have not included the value 
 of his garden-produce, nor yet whatever profit he 
 may make from his allotment, both of which must 
 therefore be added to the above total. The net 
 profit on an allotment of one rood is usually cal- 
 culated at about £5 a-year. 
 
 Such being his income, we have next to consider 
 what he can buy with it; and tliis much seems 
 to be certain at any rate, that he can buy more 
 with it now than he could have done at almost 
 any time within the present century. Ordinary 
 commodities — bread, mutton, bacon, cheese, butter, 
 tea and sugar, boots, shoes, and coats — are all from 
 20 to 30 per cent cheaper than they were eighteen 
 years ago, while wages are just about the same. 
 The village labourer now is a wholly different 
 man from what he was in the last generation. 
 He wears different clothes, eats different food, lives 
 in a different house, and works in a different
 
 170 TI11<; OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 manuer. He wears broadcloth on Sundays, and 
 sometimes at his work too. The old smock-frock 
 is entirely discarded, except by a few village patri- 
 archs, who cling to it just as gentlemen here and 
 there clung to their pigtails in the reign of George 
 IV. That decent garb will soon become a thing 
 of the past, equally with the more picturesque 
 velveteen coat, corduroy knee-breeches, well-fitting 
 grey worsted stockings, and neat well-greased boots, 
 which formed the Sunday attire of the younger 
 peasantry thirty years ago. They must all now 
 have their black coats to their backs, and badly 
 made trousers on their legs, and badly polished 
 boots on their feet ; the consequence being that they 
 do not look a quarter so much like gentlemen as 
 they did in their old costume ; and are all the 
 poorer for looking all the more vulgar. 
 
 The average day-labourer in regular work now 
 eats butcher's meat much oftener than he used to 
 do. He will often have broiled ham for breakfast ; 
 and at harvest-time, when his wife, or oftener his 
 little girl, carries out " father's tea " to him in the 
 meadows, if you lift the corner of her apron, or
 
 THE rEASANTKY. 171 
 
 peep intu her basket, ten to one you will find a tin 
 of preserved salmon or a box of sardines stowed 
 away between the loaf and the jug. Look into 
 the window of the village shop and see the tale 
 it tells, — tinned meats and soups, delicacies and 
 " kickshaws," which, to " the rude forefathers of 
 the hamlet," would have seemed as strange and 
 wonderful as the Tokay and Johannisberg of Lord 
 de Mowbray seemed to the savages of Hell House 
 Yard. Grocery and chandlery are now brought 
 round to the villages in vans at a much lower 
 rate than the local shopkeepers can afford to sell 
 them at. Necessaries are far cheaper than they 
 were in the labourer's childhood, and luxuries have 
 now become as cheap as necessaries were then. 
 
 I would avoid wearying the reader with statistics 
 while still on the threshold of the subject. I will 
 only add, therefore, that the labourers' cottages, as 
 a rule, are far better than they used to be ; that 
 landowners have almost everywhere been making 
 great efforts to provide proper accommodation for 
 the peasantry on their own estates ; and that the 
 decrease of the village population has in many
 
 172 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 places caused the supply of cottages to be in 
 excess of the demand. The hovels which still 
 exist under the name of cottages almost always 
 belong either to the occupiers themselves, who 
 sturdily refuse to quit them, or else to speculative 
 builders in some adjoining town, wlio have run 
 them up as cheaply, and charge for them as dearly, 
 as they can. The labourer may still be dissatisfied 
 with his lodging, but he knows perfectly well that 
 it is a great advance on what it used to be, that 
 it is improving every day, and that if it is not 
 better, it is not the fault of the Squire. 
 
 Next we come to the allotment system — and 
 on this subject great misapprehensions prevailed 
 down to the passing of Lord Onslow's Act, 
 when, however, public interest being aroused, the 
 question was examined and many foolish errors 
 put to rout. A little while before the passing 
 of this bill. Lord Onslow himself had written a 
 book upon allotments, the contents of which were 
 abundantly confirmed by the parliamentary de- 
 bates which followed. All that those who had 
 been loudest in their denunciations of the land-
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 173 
 
 owners now found to say was that, although tlie 
 demand for allotments had been all ]jut entirely 
 supplied by voluntary effort, still it was desirable 
 to have an Act of Parliament to provide for tlie 
 very few instances in which it had not. Besides 
 Lord Onslow's book, we have the Government 
 returns published last year ; and it is now known, 
 or easily may be known, to all who will take 
 the trouble to inquire, that of the whole number 
 of agricultural labourers in England and Wales 
 only a very small percentage are without either 
 allotments, cottage-gardens, or cow-runs. Accord- 
 ing to the census returns of 1881, the number of 
 hond fide agricultural labourers in England and 
 Wales was 807,608. We know that they have 
 not increased in number since that time ; and 
 according to official statements in 1887, the num- 
 ber of allotments, gardens, and cow-runs amounted 
 to 654,028, of these 389,000 being allotments. 
 
 But what it is also very interesting to know 
 is this: that, according to the evidence collected 
 by Lord Onslow, and published only two years 
 ago, in many English counties allotments were at
 
 17-t THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 that date going begging. The okl tenants had vol- 
 untarily abandoned them, and no new ones could 
 be found to take their places. It was not the rent 
 tliat was deterrent ; for in some cases this was 
 lower than the agricultural rent of the district, in 
 many it was just the same, and in only a few a 
 little higher. Nor can the fact be entirely owing 
 to the distance of the allotments from the villages ; 
 for I can remember allotment-grounds more than 
 half a mile from the nearest cottage for which 
 there was a regular scramble as soon as a vacancy 
 occurred, though now it appears half of them are 
 on the landlords' hands. Whether this has any- 
 thing to do with the development of a new trait 
 in the agricultural labourer — the dislike, namely, 
 of hard work — may be worth consideration. Of 
 allotments I will conclude by saying that, though 
 the system is sometimes spoken of by self-constituted 
 champions of the peasantry as if it was a new thing, 
 it has been in existence since the beginning of the 
 century, and was taken up generally by the country 
 clergy, who were the first to appreciate its benefits, 
 at least sixty years ago.
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 175 
 
 It will now be seen, I think, that if the English 
 peasantry have any reason to be dissatisfied with 
 their present lot, it can hardly be on the ground of 
 physical privations. AVe are none of us so well off 
 lint what we might be better; and unquestionably 
 the agricultural labourer may legitimately aspire 
 to a somewhat higher life than he leads at present. 
 But he is better off relatively than either the pro- 
 prietor or the tenant-farmer. They have sunk in 
 the scale of prosperity; he has risen. He enjoys 
 comforts and luxuries unknown to his fathers and 
 grandfathers; while they have been obliged to 
 abandon what their fathers and grandfathers en- 
 joyed. He is not obliged to work so hard as he 
 did formerly, nor to begin work so young; and he 
 is educated a great deal better. Where then does 
 the shoe pinch, if it does pinch ? Why are the 
 peasants leaving the land, as we are told they are, 
 and crowding into the large towns ? Why is 
 skilled agricultural labour growing scarcer and 
 scarcer in our villages, and why are the farmers 
 complaining that they cannot get their ground 
 properly cultivated owing to the fact that the
 
 17G TITE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 labourers who remain behind are too stupid, too 
 indolent, or too indifferent to learn the details of 
 agriculture? To know this, one might almost say, 
 would be to know everything — to know what is 
 passing in the minds of the most active and intelli- 
 gent of the peasantry as well as in the minds of 
 the most sluggish, and to be able to give a good 
 guess at what they are likely to do with the power 
 newly placed in their hands. Of the facts them- 
 selves, I am afraid there can be no doubt. The 
 exodus of the peasantry is a fact. The inferiority 
 for all agricultural purposes of those who stay at 
 home is a fact. Tlie Eichmond Commission is a 
 witness to this. But what would keep the better 
 ones at home, or stimulate the worse to greater 
 exertions and to a more lively interest in the work 
 they are called on to perform, are questions not so 
 easily answered. 
 
 I am allowing the hypothesis on wliich the whole 
 discussion hangs — namely, that discontent docs exist 
 among the English peasantry to a perceptible if 
 not to a serious extent — to pass unchallenged. We 
 had better see it where it does not exist, than
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 177 
 
 not see it where it does. Besides, thougli I think 
 it is much exaggerated, I do not think it wholly 
 imaginary. It is no very difficult thing in this 
 world, of course, to set class against class ; and 
 in some parts of England, I daresay the labourers 
 may have been taught to think that whatever 
 they have to complain of in their lot is the doing 
 of those above them, either the farmers or the 
 gentry, or both. It is a very exceptional state of 
 thiniTS indeed in which there will not be from 
 time to time some kind of friction in the rela- 
 tions between employers and employed. No doubt 
 the labourers in many counties at this moment 
 are grumbling at their wages and girding at the 
 farmers. But they understand something about 
 farming. They can calculate pretty well what 
 wages the farmer can afford to pay, and what rent 
 the landlord is entitled to demand ; and I see no 
 evidence that there is among them any widespread 
 or deeply rooted feeling that they are being treated 
 with injustice. What they do think, I believe, is, 
 that if the farmers cannot cultivate the land them- 
 selves, they might as well give the labourers a 
 
 M
 
 178 THE OLD AXD TTTE NEW. 
 
 chance. Anything, they think, would be better 
 than letting it remain as it is. On a certain per- 
 centage of the peasantry we may suppose that this 
 view of the land question does operate with more 
 or less effect. But my own opinion is, that we 
 must Sfo behind this if we want to get at the root of 
 the matter. Different motives springing from dis- 
 tinct sources may converge towards similar results 
 in the long-run ; and it may very well be that 
 the vague kind of dissatisfaction which prompts 
 the labourer to leave his home, may ultimately be 
 allayed by some readjustment of the land question. 
 But the land question is only very partially the 
 cause of it at the present moment. 
 
 Assuming, then, that dissatisfaction to a greater 
 or less degree does exist, let us take one l)y one the 
 various reasons which have been given for it, and 
 the various remedies which have been suggested. 
 Some say that what the emigrants want is ''■ a 
 better position " generally, than they occupy as 
 farm - labourers, even at the best ; and that as 
 they cannot get it on tlie land they go to seek it 
 in the town. Others say that they have acquired
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 170 
 
 a taste for the excitement and the pleasures of 
 a town life, and that nothing now would retain 
 them in a country village. If so, it is a had 
 look-out for English agriculture. Sometimes we 
 are told that they wish to become farmers, or to 
 see a fair prospect of becoming farmers, on their 
 own account, by the time they have passed middle 
 age ; that they are tired of being dependent all 
 their lives, and wish to have somethinc: to fight 
 for, as the artisan has — the chance, that is, of 
 becoming a master man. A fourth class say that 
 they cannot stand the cottages ; and a fifth, that 
 they go away simply because they cannot get 
 work, while all the time the farmers say they 
 cannot get labour. Sixthly, it is urged that the 
 peasantry leave the land because there is no longer 
 enough under the plough to find employment for 
 them, and likewise that machinerv has lessened 
 the demand for agricultural hands, 
 
 I will not say but what there may be an element 
 of truth in all and each of the above theories. 
 Those who converse with the educated young 
 labourer of the present day, will perceive that he
 
 180 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 is thinking of things only indirectly connected 
 with the conditions of agriculture. With his for- 
 mer garb he has cast his former self.^ He has 
 lost his relish for the country. He will tell you, 
 if you can only lead him on to talk frankly, that 
 village life is " a poor thing " : that is a favourite 
 phrase with him. He will declare that his native 
 village is "a poor place" — and that not from any 
 fancied sense of personal superiority in himself, 
 but really because it fails to satisfy those newly 
 felt yearnings in his own heart which education 
 has planted there. He is conscious that an agri- 
 cultural labourer is not so important a member 
 of society as an artisan. He has no corporate life : 
 no institute, no discussion, no power. The artisan 
 seems to breathe a larger and freer moral and 
 intellectual atmosphere. The young labourer has 
 read quite enough at the board school to put 
 thoughts of this kind into his head. Tennyson, 
 referring to a different class of society, has described 
 the feelings of a country-bred youth on first seeing 
 
 1 These remarks refer only to one class of the peasantry — those 
 who arc on tlic move — not to those who still cultivate the soil.
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 181 
 
 the lights of London, in words which express very 
 much my own meaning : — 
 
 " Aiul his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him, then, 
 Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of 
 men." 
 
 Something of this kind of longing has now, I 
 think, penetrated down to the agricultural labourer. 
 The young, clever, well-educated peasant wants to 
 be something more than the best ploughman or 
 the best thatcher in the village. It is not with 
 him a question of wages. Young, unmarried, skil- 
 ful, and intelligent, if he gives his mind to farm- 
 work, he may earn wages that will give him all 
 he wants and more. It is not altogether a question 
 of the land either. He knows what kind of life the 
 owner of three or four acres leads, and it has 
 few charms for him compared with pushing his 
 fortune in the city. 
 
 Town life to the labourer seems fraught with 
 indefinite possibilities to which the country afibrds 
 no parallel ; and since his imagination has once 
 been stirred by them, he will never again be 
 exactly what he was before. Setting aside, how-
 
 182 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 ever, all these glittering visions, tlic practical 
 common-sense view of the matter is, that he sees 
 in the town opportunities of rising in life which 
 do not exist in the country. They do not exist 
 for the farmer, nor yet for the squire, any more 
 than they do for the labourer. Their place in 
 society is fixed. But the peasant sees that artisans 
 become shopkeepers, that shopkeepers become mer- 
 chants, and that merchants become merchant princes. 
 If such thoughts ever entered into his head in the 
 old days, they remained thoughts only. He did 
 not know how to go to work to begin a new career. 
 But schools and railways have taught him; and 
 in less than another generation the peasant of the 
 olden time — the peasant of Gray's Elegy, the 
 peasant of George Eliot, contented to end his days 
 as he began them in his native village, satisfied 
 with his own position, and without a wish to rise 
 out of that station in life to which it had pleased 
 God to call him — will probably be quite extinct. 
 
 That the pleasures and the excitement of a town 
 life, quite apart from the opening which it affords 
 to the more enterprising and aspiring spirits, tend
 
 THE I'EASANTllY. 1S3 
 
 to draw the labourer away from home, is only 
 natural and probable ; and there is this not un- 
 important fact to be remembered, that when the 
 labourer calls his village life " a poor thing," it 
 really is a poor thing in one sense compared with 
 what it used to be within living memory. It may 
 be that the younger labourers, if they could sud- 
 denly be thrown back for a generation, retaining 
 at the same time their present tastes and habits, 
 would not care for the pleasures which satisfied 
 their grandfathers. 
 
 o'- 
 
 " The sports of children satisfy the chikl ; " 
 
 and the labourer has put away childish things. 
 But there is no doubt that the life of an English 
 village at the present day is duller than it was 
 fifty years ago. Different customs prevailed in 
 different parts of England ; but everywhere the 
 villages kept up old festivals and traditional rejoic- 
 ings with a heartiness which has now died out. 
 I cannot remember the May-pole, and have only 
 seen a limited number of village greens of the 
 old - fashioned cut ; but the " feast " or " wake,"
 
 184 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 which is still not entirely extinct, was in many 
 English counties thirty years ago a kind of village 
 carnival, to which the whole population looked 
 forward with intense deli'dit. Most of the cot- 
 tagers had then their friends and relatives to 
 stay with them, and the poorest had a large piece 
 of beef, a plum-pudding, and a bottle of home- 
 made wine. The children who were out at service 
 always came home for the feast — or fee-ast, as it 
 was pronounced in the midland counties ; and by 
 some of the more privileged among the matrons 
 the parson's children would be asked to tea. The 
 village street in the evening, if the feast came in 
 the summer was a regular promenade. Booths 
 and caravans, with all kinds of shows, toys, and 
 sweets, stood on each side ; and, as I need not 
 say, the public-houses drove a roaring trade. The 
 principal farmers did not in those days think it 
 infra dig. to follow the example of the labourers ; 
 and they, too, used generally to have their houses 
 full at the feast. It was a great time, too, for 
 weddings ; and also for lights. The champions of 
 two neighbouring villages would often make a
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 185 
 
 match to coine off at the feast, besides the 
 numerous scratch encounters got up over the 
 pipes and ale. The feast began on the saint's day 
 to whom the church was dedicated, or the Sunday 
 nearest to it, and usually lasted a week. It afforded 
 matter to talk of for three months before it becian 
 and for three months after it was over. 
 
 I have known villages elsewhere where the great 
 festival was on Trinity Sunday, and on the Monday 
 evening the whole village danced upon the parson's 
 lawn. Then there were Christmas-day, and Plough 
 Monday, and Whitsuntide, and other time-honoured 
 occasions which brought their appropriate diver- 
 sions, but which now, from all I can ascertain, 
 if still observed, have lost much of their former 
 light-hearted joviality. Above all, there was the 
 harvest-home, for which the modern harvest festival 
 is no exact equivalent, though it may be, and no 
 doubt is in some respects, a great improvement on 
 it. But there is not the freedom, the licence, and 
 the old joviality of the farmhouse kitchen in these 
 modern entertainments. They are not "cakes and 
 ale," and can never be equally attractive to the
 
 18G THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 younger generation, who will have Lheir lling in 
 one way or another, let the moralists say what 
 they please. 
 
 In tlie clays of old, then, the village was a little 
 self-contained community, with its own simple 
 round of amusements and interests, providing suf- 
 ficient excitement for a population which knew no 
 others, and rearing generation after generation of 
 sturdy agricultural labourers, who accepted their 
 vocation as a law of nature, and never looked 
 beyond it. Village life was not dull to them, partly 
 because it really was more cheerful and diversified 
 in itself than it is at present, partly because the 
 labourer had not learned to look abroad and com- 
 pare ]\Iantua with Eonie. 
 
 Nearly all the young men in the rural districts 
 between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five have 
 now passed through the educational process. It has 
 opened a new world to them. Who ever could 
 have expected it to be otherwise ? It has thoroughly 
 unsettled them, and till the process of fermentation 
 is over we must be prepared for startling pheno- 
 mena. The danger is lest what is only the nat-
 
 THE I'EASANTKY. 187 
 
 iiral disturbance consequent on a period of tran- 
 sition, should be mistaken for the symptoms of 
 deep and permanent disaffection with the structure 
 and conditions of society. One cure for this form 
 of discontent, the first upon our list, is the district 
 or the parish council. When the peasant finds he 
 can be " as big a man " in his native village as in 
 the adjoining town, his principal inducement to 
 leave the country will, it is thought, disappear. 
 
 But if what we have here said has any element 
 of truth in it, such will not be the effect. The 
 parish council would not make him as big a man 
 as he imagines he can make himself by migrating 
 to the town. It will not materially alter his posi- 
 tion in life. Farmer or labourer, he would be a 
 peasant still. Much is written and spoken of the 
 stimulating effect of corporate or municipal life. 
 It is forgotten that in large towns there are always 
 questions arising to keep that life in activity. But 
 in an ordinary -sized village this would be impossible ; 
 and either the institution would stagnate and wither, 
 or fall into the hands of w4re-pullers and busybodies, 
 who would speedily disgust all the respectable in-
 
 188 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 hal>itaiits, wliether farmers, labourers, or gentlemen, 
 with the whole concern. There is no magic in names 
 or in forms of government. To force local institu- 
 tions into being where there is really nothing for 
 them to live upon, so far from creating that spirit 
 in the people which it is thought desirable to arouse, 
 will only have the opposite effect of bringing the 
 institution itself into contempt. 
 
 The Report of the Poor Law Commissioners in 
 1834, pages 107-118, on Parish Vestries, will be 
 found to throw a good deal of light on the ques- 
 tion of parish councils. 
 
 When Mr Morley recently sketched out the func- 
 tions which, in his opinion, should be intrusted to 
 parish councils, what kind of parishes could possibly 
 have been present to his mind ? Does he seriously 
 suppose that in an English agricultural village, with 
 a population of two hundred people, there are to be 
 found the materials for a representative assembly 
 competent to deal with such questions as charities, 
 allotments, public buildings, common lands, and 
 compulsory acquisition of land for i)ublic purposes ; 
 or that, even if there were, anything could be found
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 189 
 
 for them to do ? In the vast majority of English 
 villages the allotment system is already established ; 
 and where it is not, could only be established once. 
 The public buildings in many such places are limited 
 to the parish pound, and the old rotten stocks still 
 standing in the neighbourhood of the public-house. 
 In a great many there are neither charities nor 
 common lands. And in very few are the charities of 
 sufficient importance to afford any employment to 
 a parish council. Is a council composed of such 
 materials to have the power of levying rates, and 
 of deciding what portions of the land belonging 
 to their neighbours is to be appropriated to their 
 own use ? We can scarcely believe that Mr Mor- 
 ley meant this. Yet such is the impression which 
 his language leaves upon the reader. 
 
 Whether the newly awakened ambition of the 
 peasantry, and their desire to find themselves in 
 a position where, in common with their fellow- 
 labourers in tlie town, they may have opportunities 
 of rising, will be satisfied by providing them with 
 greater facilities for obtaining land of their own, 
 is a question which it is useless either to ask or
 
 190 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 to answer till we can make up our minds on the 
 possibility of establishing in this country the system 
 of petty culture on a large scale, and as an import- 
 ant and substantial branch of our agricultural 
 economy. The exceptionally industrious, skilful, 
 and economical labourer never had any difficulty 
 in obtaining "a bit of land" for himself l)y the 
 time he was forty or fifty years of age ; and has 
 less now than ever. But, as I have already stated, 
 I doidjt if the class of men who are now turning 
 to the towns would care to live as he does, always 
 supposing them to be possessed of the same quali- 
 fications. The time may come when they will find 
 out their mistake, and be glad to come back again 
 to the land. But that time has not come yet. 
 JMeanwhile the provision of small farms for the 
 peasantry indiscriminately would never work. At 
 what age are they to have them, and on what 
 conditions ? The feeling of independence would 
 reconcile them to hard living. To tell the ordinary 
 peasant that as a small farmer ho would have to 
 work harder, live harder, and die sooner than the 
 ordinary day-labourer, makes no impression on him ;
 
 THE PEASANTEY. 191 
 
 his answer is that he would " chance that." He 
 would readily pay that price to be his own master. 
 But could the average English labourer live at all 
 on a farm of four acres ? not live well, but keep 
 body and soul together? And would not the first 
 pinch of adversity, or two or three bad seasons in 
 succession, make an end of him ? I think the more 
 intelligent class of labourers would have but one 
 answer to this question, and that it is this which 
 sends them into the towns. 
 
 There is at present a self-acting principle of 
 selection at work which will always provide for 
 the best ; but when we come down to the average, 
 what is to be done then ? On what principles 
 are the candidates for public assistance to be chosen 
 when one is as good as another ? Will not an 
 amount of jealousy and discontent be created hj 
 such a system, out of all proportion to the good 
 done ? Furthermore, it is said that such a measure 
 will restore to the farmer the supply of labour 
 which he wants. But the conversion of labourers 
 into farmers does not seem a very promising method 
 of producing that result either. The agricultural
 
 192 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 labourer will not consent to wait till he is an old 
 man before he gets a farm. He will desire to 
 obtain one when he is in the prime of life, and 
 then what becomes of his usefulness to the farmer? 
 Just as his skill and experience are becoming of the 
 highest value to his employer, he will want to 
 leave him. 
 
 Those labourers who are driven from the country 
 simply because they cannot get work, have in most 
 instances only themselves to blame. They can't do 
 the work, and they won't learn it. This is the 
 unanimous^ testimony of farmers from all parts 
 of England, north, south, east, and west. For- 
 merly, when the better class of young men which 
 produced the skilled labourer — the thatcher, the 
 liedger, and the drainer — remained at home, they 
 kept up the standard of work. Now that they 
 are gone, it has fallen to a lower level. Tlie 
 labourers are listless and indifferent. Some kinds 
 of farm-work they can't do at all, and what they 
 can do they do badly. Few of them are fit to 
 
 ^ Duke of Richmond's Report (1879-81), passim. 'Tlie Agricul- 
 tural Labourer,' jip. ^u-GQ.
 
 THE PEASANTKY. 193 
 
 be trusted with horses, or dumb animals in gen- 
 eral. Many of them are men who have made a 
 venture in the towns, but having neither the 
 energy nor the talent to secure success, have 
 wandered back to their native villages, rejected 
 by the wareliouse and spoiled for the corn-field. 
 This is the material on which the farmers now 
 have to work ; and we can understand them 
 saying that they cannot afford to pay such men 
 high wages, and that they do not choose to 
 make work for them when none is absolutely 
 wanted. 
 
 With regard to the effect of machinery on the 
 demand for agricultural labour, opinions seem to 
 differ. Some say that it has had no effect at all; 
 and even where it has, seeing that it is the best 
 men who are in demand for the management of 
 engines, the introduction of machinery can scarcely 
 account for the migration of the best men. 
 
 No doubt the withdrawal of land from cultiva- 
 tion has injured the labourer's position ; but the 
 effect of it has been greatly overrated. If we 
 take the number of acres of arable land which 
 
 N
 
 194 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 have gone out of cultivation during the agricul- 
 tural depression, and then calculate the number 
 of labourers which would ordinarily have been 
 employed upon them, the product will account 
 for only a small percentage of the emigrants. 
 
 We have now gone over the various causes to 
 which the so-called "exodus" of the agricultural 
 population may be attributed, and we find, as 
 might be expected, that those who remain behind 
 are inferior both in character and intelligence to 
 those who have departed. We are next confronted 
 with the fact that it will be these men, and not 
 the peasantry of an earlier and better day, who 
 will represent the peasant vote in the new scheme 
 of county government. I for one should have no 
 fear of that class of labourers from whom for- 
 merly came all the skilled workmen, and among 
 whom every farmer found his right - hand man. 
 These men, with their higher education and sharp- 
 ened wits, have not parted with tlieir old tradi- 
 tions and old associations, to fall under the yoke 
 of new masters and become the cat's-paws of a 
 selfish conspiracy. Supposing them to retain not
 
 THE PEASANTKY. 195 
 
 a remnant of their former respect for the ancient 
 proprietors of tlie soil, and the families with whom 
 their ancestors have been connected for so many 
 generations, they have got some ideas of political 
 economy instead ; while their minds have been 
 sufficiently trained to accustom them to look a 
 little way ahead in judging of questions which 
 touch their own immediate interests. They would 
 not be so likely as the more ignorant class whom 
 they have left behind them, to judge of the small- 
 farm question by its mimediate benefits without 
 looking to its ultimate results. Their minds would 
 be capable of embracing both sides of the con- 
 troversy ; while on questions of pauperism and poor- 
 relief, their own self-respect would be some guaran- 
 tee against their sanctioning extreme courses. 
 
 But can we say as much of the residuum, left to 
 their own sweet wills, and uncontrolled and unintiu- 
 enced by the more intelligent members of their order 
 who have left the soil ? I doubt it. It is among 
 these, if anywhere among the peasantry, that the 
 worst kind of demagogues will find their readiest 
 tools and most ignorant and credulous disciples. It
 
 196 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 is among these that communistic doctrines may 
 possibly make some progress — and any theories 
 whatever which promise a day's independence, re- 
 gardless of all future consequences. It is ditiicult 
 to say exactly what thoughts are passing through 
 their brains at this moment. Some of these men 
 may fancy themselves ill-used; some few may 
 cherish a grudge against the farmers ; and a still 
 smaller number may have been taught to see 
 their enemies in the gentry. I fancy, however, 
 that their feeling towards both is one rather 
 of indifference. But they think a good deal of 
 the "turn and turn about" doctrine. They have 
 a kind of vague idea that it ought to be their 
 turn now. The gentry and the farmers have 
 had a good time of it, they think, for many cen- 
 turies. Why should not they themselves have a 
 slice of good fortune at last? I don't think they 
 "0 further than this. Such ideas as that the 
 land belongs to them ; that they have been robbed 
 of it; that the present owners are tyrants and 
 oppressors, — I do not think have nuade much way 
 with them. They apply the parable of Dives and
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 197 
 
 Lazarus to tlie conditions of this world. They 
 think that those above them have had their good 
 things, and likewise themselves evil things. They 
 are therefore entitled to compensation. They have 
 no dislike of gentlemen as such ; nor do they want 
 to be gentlemen themselves. They know very well 
 that they have experienced nothing but kindness 
 from the old families and from the clergy ; and 
 they have, as a rule, no angry feelings towards 
 them. They have no desire to injure them for 
 the sake of injuring them. They wish only to 
 better themselves. 
 
 Their political creed was, and in many places still 
 is, summed up in a very simple formula. There are 
 two parties in the country — "the high party and 
 the low party," whereof the latter, though it might 
 naturally be supposed more in harmony with tl\e 
 lower orders, had, before he obtained the franchise, 
 small hold upon the labourer's sympathies. In his 
 inability to exercise any real political power, the 
 labourer's politics ran in a traditional, and what 
 might perhaps be called an emotional, channel. 
 The old dislike and suspicion of Dissent, for in-
 
 198 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 stance, handed down from the seventeenth century, 
 survived in great strength in the English rural 
 districts less than twenty years ago ; and the 
 low party maintained equivocal relations with 
 " Methodies," Eanters, Junipers, d hoc genus omnr, 
 for whom the unsophisticated English peasant, 
 with his innate sense of humour, entertained feel- 
 ings the reverse of respectful. Then, again, the 
 low party were supposed to be " agen the gentry " ; 
 and as there was nothing at that time to be gained 
 by attacking these last, there was nothing to inter- 
 rupt the free play of the labourer's natural inclina- 
 tions, which were in favour of gentlemen as a class, 
 though they might dislike particular individuals. 
 Since they have obtained the franchise, however, 
 they have come to see tlie low party in rather 
 a different light ; and the conflict between their 
 ancient prepossessions and their material interests, 
 as these are represented to them by the " low " 
 connection, is now very perceptible, and is, in fact, 
 tlie most important factor in the political situation 
 of the day. As I have already stated, I don't 
 think their feelings towards the clergy and gentry
 
 THE PEASANTRY. . 199 
 
 are less friendly than they were, except in so far 
 as they present any obstacles to the realisation 
 of those golden dreams in which the rural dema- 
 gogue has taught them to believe. But as far as 
 he lias taught them to believe in these, he has 
 doubtless arrayed them to some extent -against the 
 owners and occupiers of the soil.^ It is the old 
 story. And how long the delusion will last it is 
 impossible to say. The peasantry, however, are in 
 course of being educated. They nourish no resent- 
 ment against " nouns and verbs and such abomina- 
 tions," so it may be hoped they will find out the 
 truth before irreparable harm is done. 
 
 ^ Speaking of these same golden dreams and reckless promises, 
 a statesman of the highest rank has used the following words : 
 " I say that is a most dangerous proceeding when you are dealing 
 in the country districts of England with a population new to 
 political duties, and not as yet educated to the same pitch of polit- 
 ical culture as happily prevails in our great centres of population. 
 They are easily misled by promises, by the prospect of schemes 
 which can never be fulfilled. Their members, recollect, are not 
 reported to the same extent that the members of the great towns 
 are reported ; they go about from one small meeting to another, 
 dropping here a promise and there something not quite a promise, 
 but which is taken as such ; and it is all-important to them, as 
 they despair of winning the educated urban electors, to do what 
 they can to convert the uncultured rural electors."
 
 200 THE OLD ANP THE NEW. 
 
 I believe this to be a reasonably close approxima- 
 tion to the mental condition of those men who still 
 " plough the glebe and lop the glados " — the bond 
 fide agricultural labourers of this country. It is 
 easy to see, however, that here are materials for 
 the revolutionary agitator to work upon ; and one 
 of the most important, if not the most important, 
 social questions of the present day, is how best to 
 counteract his efforts. Tor all honest and con- 
 scientious endeavours to elevate the condition of 
 the peasantry, without any arritre- jpensSc in the 
 background, we have the most unfeigned respect. 
 But it is perfectly well known that a detach- 
 ment of Eadicals are now busily at work who 
 only make the improvement of the peasantry a 
 stalking-horse for the destruction of the gentry; 
 and it is against these, and their dealings with 
 the peasantry, that we have to be on our guard. 
 The country gentlemen are marked men with a cer- 
 tain set of politicians. A triple attack is gradually 
 being developed against their property, their inilu- 
 ence, and their amusements. Their estates are 
 threatened by the compulsory appropriation of land
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 201 
 
 for purposes of very doubtful utility. Their influ- 
 ence is threatened by the transfer of their local 
 duties to other hands. And their amusements are 
 threatened by the Cockney clamour which is still 
 kept up against all manner of field-sports. To 
 compel them to retire from the position which they 
 now occupy by robbing it of all which makes it 
 either dignified or pleasant, is the scarcely disguised 
 object of one section of " the labourer's friends." 
 
 Should anybody think that the language here 
 used is unjust or exaggerated, he may compare the 
 words of perhaps the ablest of English journals, 
 whose Liberalism is above suspicion. On the 14th 
 of April 1888, the ' Spectator ' wrote as follows of the 
 proposed parish council: "If he [the squire] stood 
 for election, he would be catechised, criticised, and 
 ridiculed throughout his own domain ; and if he 
 did not stand, he would be left stranded with no 
 means of influence, and no rights except that of 
 obeying orders, which, if the control of pathways 
 is handed over to the parish councils, will often be 
 dictated by pure malice and a desire to humiliate 
 the local king."
 
 202 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 The Church, too, is an integral part of the Eng- 
 lish rural system ; and it is only to be expected 
 that the Radical party in the parish or district 
 councils will, sooner or later, claim the riglit of 
 interference with the parish churches. On all these 
 subjects tlie labourer will be appealed to by the 
 usual arguments. And the question is how far he 
 has the intellectual stamina to hold out against the 
 fallacies that will bo laid before him, when they 
 seem to promise him any immediate material ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 So far we have contented ourselves with register- 
 ing the distinction which must just now be drawn 
 between the higher and lower grades of the English 
 peasantry — between those who are attracted to the 
 towns and those who remain upon the land. But 
 when we have done this, there are still other 
 distinctions to be drawn, and modifications and 
 reservations to be taken into account besides. 
 All the superior class of labourers have not left 
 the land. All the inferior class arc not sucli as 
 I have described. All villages are not alike — 
 the difference between those in wliich there is a
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 203 
 
 resident proprietor, and tliose in which there is 
 not, being marked, and apparently indelible. And 
 finally, all the cottage population are not agricul- 
 tural labourers. Thus we shall see that, with all 
 these limitations, the class to which our less favour- 
 able estimate applies is not quite so large as might 
 at first sight have been supposed ; though I am 
 afraid, at the same time, that the non-agricultural 
 elements of the English peasantry are not of a 
 nature to do much to neutralise any mischievous 
 ingredients which may have crept into the general 
 mass. The small shopkeeper, the tailor, the shoe- 
 maker, and the carpenter, in a country village, 
 are not usually either the best Churchmen or the 
 best Conservatives in the parish : for what reason I 
 cannot imagine, unless it is from some inherent 
 moral antagonism between trade of any kind and 
 agriculture, which to the philosopher is foolish- 
 ness, but which to the practical observer does often 
 seem to be the only explanation of various rural 
 phenomena. 
 
 To set against this, however, we have the better 
 disposition and more conservative sentiments of
 
 204 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 even the present class of lal30urers in villages 
 which have been for generations nnder the imme- 
 diate influence of a resident landed proprietor, and 
 have had average good fortune in the vicars or 
 rectors of the parish. If the trading element in 
 the country goes to weigh down the scale on one 
 side, the lingering spirit of feudal loyalty will de- 
 press it on the other. We may allow these two 
 influences perhaps to cancel each other. But even 
 then we have a floating balance of doubtful if not 
 unfriendly feeling to reckon with, which we can- 
 not contemplate without anxiety. 
 
 How the present race of labourers would demean 
 themselves with regard to the various questions 
 above mentioned, tithes, compulsory expropriation, 
 wastes, footpaths, game, &c., if appealed to on 
 such matters by candidates for a parish or district 
 council, would be determined very much by the 
 presence or absence of the conditions to which I 
 have just referred. Where the squire and the 
 parson were resident, and did their duty to the 
 people — as in ninety-nine cases out of every hun- 
 dred, where they are resident, they do do it —
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 205 
 
 there it is likely that much of the agitator's elo- 
 quence would be exerted in vain. Where this 
 wholesome influence was wanting, it would probably 
 as a rule prevail. The English peasantry, I repeat, 
 have, as a body, no desire to annoy their superiors. 
 But there are two or three questions on which 
 they feel strongly. They are tenacious of what 
 they suppose to be their right to roadside wastes. 
 They are sensitive on the subject of footpaths. 
 And though I am quite certain they do not wish 
 to see game exterminated, they are irritated by the 
 severity with which petty breaches of the game- 
 laws are occasionally punished. Now in regard 
 to their behaviour on these questions, the character 
 of the men they lived under would just make the 
 entire difference. If they felt that on the whole 
 there was an honest desire, on the part of the 
 gentry and clergy, to consult their comfort and 
 convenience, and to regard trifling offences with 
 lenity, then they would act upon the principle of 
 give and take, and would not insist too obstinately 
 on their own claims, whether real or imaginary. 
 But where this was not felt, or where there was
 
 20G THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 nothing to soften clown the friction usually created 
 by bailiffs, agents, middlemen of all kinds, and 
 gamekeepers, then the peasantry would be very 
 likely to show their teeth, and in some cases to 
 regulate their votes by pure malice. Leave him to 
 the promptings of his own unbiassed disposition 
 under what I call the natural and healthy condi- 
 tions of rural life, and I do not believe the labourer 
 would raise a finger to cut up the estate of any 
 neighbouring proprietor against his will. But 
 even apart from this, I do not think that under 
 the conditions I am supposing he would desire to 
 injure the gentry in order even to benefit himself. 
 The misfortune is, that in so many parts of England 
 these conditions are absent, and the danger is lest 
 the sins of a small class of country gentlemen 
 should be visited on the whole body. 
 
 "We must remember, too, that in many parts of 
 England the social inliuence of the gentry has been 
 grievously impaired by the agricultural depression, 
 making absentees of them against their will, and 
 leaving rural society without its natural leaders and 
 directors. Tt must be allowed that the reconstruc-
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 207 
 
 tion of county government took place at a very 
 unfortunate moment, when the ohl landed pro- 
 prietors were in a worse position for contending 
 with Radical hostility than they had ever occupied 
 before. Perhaps with the returning tide of agri- 
 cultural prosperity the old instincts may revive, 
 and the alarm created by recent legislation be 
 looked back upon as a passing panic. It may 
 be so ; and practical Conservatives, to quote the 
 words of Lord Monmouth, in ' Coningsby,' " must 
 say so, and try to believe so." 
 
 What has been said of parish councils does not 
 equally apply to district councils, which would be 
 much better fitted for dealing with the ordinary 
 wants of English villages than the more august 
 body which is elected by the whole county. The 
 area covered by the district council would be 
 sufficiently small to admit of its members being 
 acquainted with all the parishes contained in it, 
 while it would be large enough to afford some 
 security for a due admixture of the various elements 
 of rural life in the governing body, and to prevent 
 the narrowest and pettiest local jealousies from
 
 208 TIIK OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 obtaining an absolute preponderance. It seems in- 
 deed almost inevitable, even if parish councils 
 were instituted, that district councils should be 
 intermixed witli them. There are some parishes 
 so thinly populated, that to give them a council 
 would be like restoring members to Old Saruni. 
 Such places must be grouped with others, and 
 it would be far simpler to plant district councils 
 at once in areas corresponding as nearly as might 
 be with the poor-law unions. 
 
 Since the introduction of county councils tlie dis- 
 trict council has become a necessity. The country 
 gentry and magistrates, to whom our rural admin- 
 istration was formerly intrusted, had the local 
 knowledge required for it. The county council as 
 a body has not. And it is essential, therefore, to 
 establish some smaller authority possessing this 
 essential qualification. Of course the district coun- 
 cil will afford a field for the agitator, as well as the 
 parochial, and attempts will be made to use the 
 one for the same purposes as the ' Spectator ' tells 
 us we are to anticipate from the other. But it will 
 not be so easy to turn the larger assembly to the
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 209 
 
 same account ; and it is to be hoped, after all, that 
 things have not gone so far in England yet as to en- 
 sure the triumph of Eadicalism in the rural districts. 
 The English peasantry are nowhere alienated like 
 the Irish. They are easily affected by kindness and 
 liberality, and it is only here and there that respect 
 for the ancient proprietors of the soil is absolutely 
 extinguished. There is still time for the country 
 gentlemen to revive the loyalty of the labourers 
 wherever it has decayed, by meeting them half- 
 way in all their new aspirations, and by saying to 
 them in effect, and in language they would glady 
 listen to — " We will be your leaders." 
 
 Of all the classes of which civilised society is 
 composed, the agricultural, says Aristotle, is the 
 least given to sedition. And there is an inherent 
 conservatism in the English peasantry which will 
 long struggle against the sweeping changes recom- 
 mended to them, however apparently favourable 
 to their own interests. There is nothing so con- 
 servative as Nature. And the labourer passes his 
 days from the cradle to the grave in communion 
 with her. The woods and brooks and hills, the 
 

 
 210 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 corn and pasture fields, tlic unchanging land- 
 marks which greet hiui every day as he goes forth 
 to and returns fruni liis labours, make a man think 
 less of himself than he does when pent up in 
 cities amid the work of human hands, and the 
 incessant din of social rivalries and controversies. 
 The trees and the fields speak to him in a differ- 
 ent voice. They speak to him of that which is 
 tranquil, permanent, and beautiful, rebuking not 
 only " the fierce tumultuous passions," but also all 
 the little petty animosities of this fleeting exist- 
 ence. This is what Virgil was thinking of in those 
 delightful lines — 
 
 " Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes, 
 Panaque Sylvanumque senem, Nyinpliasque sorores ! " 
 
 Though unconscious of the source from which it 
 comes, it is hence that the peasant derives much 
 of that composure of manner and that natural 
 dignity which is one of his generic characteristics. 
 There is a natural courtesy and politeness in 
 the country labourers, where they have not been 
 brutalised by long neglect, which it is very pleas- 
 ant to experience, and which would make it doubly
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 211 
 
 painful should there ever come to be a class war 
 between the peasantry and the gentry. I will not 
 believe for a moment that these manners are as- 
 sumed by the labourers to serve their own purposes 
 or disguise their real feelings. Let a stranger 
 during a country walk ask any labouring man at 
 work in the fields his way to the next village, 
 or the name of the owner of the land, or any 
 other question concerning the neighbourhood, and 
 observe the manner of his reply. It is quite easy 
 and natural; at the same time perfectly respect- 
 ful. He conveys the impression that he likes to 
 be spoken to, and he is evidently anxious to oblige. 
 This is not the manner of the townsman, who, I 
 believe, at heart is equally willing to be of service 
 to you, but has not the faculty of conveying his 
 information in the same agreeable and good-hu- 
 moured manner as the rustic. The latter is never 
 in a false position ; never on the alert to detect 
 any fancied slight in your mode of addressing him ; 
 never uneasy for fear you should be thinking too 
 little of him: he knows his own station, and what 
 is due to himself; and as long as you show that
 
 212 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 you know it too, he is perfectly satisfied, and never 
 afraid of being too complaisant. This natural ease 
 is the secret of good-breeding in all classes. It is 
 self-consciousness that makes men awkward ; and 
 to this failing the peasant is a total stranger. 
 
 He is indebted for its absence partly to the life 
 he leads, and partly to the fact that he has till 
 lately been satisfied with his lot, and animated by 
 no social jealousies or ambitions. The mere fact 
 that he is not struggling for admission into any 
 higher sphere of society than his own, but is satis- 
 fied to be what he is, and to know that nothing 
 more is expected of him than what is proper to 
 that station, tends to put a man at his ease ; and 
 herein tlie peasant will contrast very favourably 
 with the artisan. 
 
 This last remark, however, applies, it must be 
 owned, rather to the generation that is going off 
 the stage than to the one that is coming on. 
 And what a pleasant generation it was ! I have 
 lived with them, played with them, ate and drank 
 with them, gone bird-nesting with them, shot and 
 fished with them, and talked with them by the
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 213 
 
 liour while they were threshing in the old barn 
 with the good old flail — whose sound perhaps I 
 shall never hear again — or cutting and "layering" 
 the stift' whitethorn hedges with their short bill- 
 hooks and huge leather gantlets, standing up to 
 their ankles in the water at the bottom of the 
 ditch from eight o'clock in the morning to four 
 o'clock in the afternoon. Such men were igno- 
 rant of many things which village children of 
 ten years old understand now. But they had 
 a natural shrewdness and sense of humour which 
 always made their conversation interesting, and 
 were as free from any taint of what is commonly 
 called vulgarity as the finest lady in the land. 
 They were indeed Nature's gentlemen. They never 
 tried to talk fine. They used their own rustic 
 language without shame, and thinking no evil ; 
 and I even recollect a most worthy old villager 
 and excellent Churchman who habitually addressed 
 the vicar's daughter, a lady of seven or eight and 
 twenty, as " my wench," to the intense amusement 
 and delight of the lady herself, so naturally and 
 politely was it said, so evidently meant as a mark
 
 214 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 of affection and regard from one who had known her 
 from the cradle. When the young peasantry become 
 old, they won't be able to do this, I am afraid. 
 
 The remarks of their seniors in the region of re- 
 ligion and morality were usually the most racy and 
 characteristic. I remember a woman in our parish, 
 a tall masculine female, and something of a ter- 
 magant, though not ill disposed upon the whole, 
 and always respectful to her betters, from whom 
 the clergyman's daughter, after giving her some 
 spiritual admonitions, received the following answer : 
 "Well, miss, I like to hear you talk in that way, 
 and I daresay it's very good and very true ; but we 
 poor folks, we've got to scrat a living together— -Jt^c 
 must chance it." 
 
 On another occasion a serious pedlar made his ap- 
 pearance in the village, declaring to every cottage 
 matron who opened her door to him that times were 
 very bad, and that he didn't know what he should 
 do " if he hadn't a sure hope through grace." " For 
 my part," said a labourer's wife, explaining the 
 pedlar's source of confidence, "I leave bragging 
 to others."
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 215 
 
 Well, all these old people will soon be laid in 
 their narrow cells, and with them much ster- 
 ling honesty, shrewd sense, fidelity and simplicity. 
 New questions which they never understood will 
 be agitated over their graves, and new conditions 
 of rural life may gradually emerge from the 
 hurly-burly which the most inveterate idolater 
 of the past will, if he lives to witness them, 
 acknowledge to be improvements. But while 
 it is yet doubtful whether this result will follow, 
 we cannot help casting a longing lingering look 
 at the ancient race, with their antique virtues 
 and simple kindly manners, and devoutly hoping 
 that the greater enlightenment of the new genera- 
 tion may compensate for their absence. 
 
 In bringing this series of sketches to a close 
 while we are still in the middle of the great 
 scheme for the reconstruction of county adminis- 
 tration, I feel that I am taking an appropriate 
 farewell of that old regime to which they have 
 been principally dedicated. It may be that under 
 the new one the distribution of power will not
 
 21 G THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 be materially altered, and that for many years 
 to come the rural system of England may present 
 an unchanged exterior. It may be so, though I 
 am not one of those who look forward to this 
 result witli much confidence. But if the form 
 remains, the spirit will have flown — the moral 
 atmosphere will be different. We have been look- 
 ing back upon a past which has no doubt been a 
 period of transition, much that still survived at 
 the commencement of it having gradually passed 
 away before either the county franchise or the 
 county council came in to complete the transfor- 
 mation. But it is equally true that men between 
 fifty and sixty can recall a time when the setting 
 sun of patriarchal feudalism had not yet sunk 
 below the horizon, and still shed a lingering glow 
 upon the face of rural England. Our eyes have 
 been watching its expiring beams, as they slowly 
 faded away from one picturesque object after 
 another, and we have only ventured to steal a 
 few furtive glances at the evening clouds to ask 
 what they might tell us of the morning. We 
 have stood with our backs to the future, drinking
 
 THE PEASANTRY. 217 
 
 in the sweetness of the olden time, rendered all 
 the sweeter by the thought that it was slipping 
 from our grasp, indulging our sympathies to the 
 utmost, and feeling in the words of the old song 
 that to-morrow we'd get sober — " Cras ingens itera- 
 bimus sequor." The most sanguine of us can hardly 
 expect that such remnants of saturnian times as 
 may still survive at this moment will outlive the 
 new influences now brought to bear upon them, 
 or that the little village hierarchy can be ever 
 again what it once was. The chairman of the 
 county council may be a country gentleman, 
 with country gentlemen on his right and on 
 his left. The farmers may recover their spirits, 
 regain their equanimity, and exhibit their former 
 common-sense ; the labourers may find out that the 
 city, after all, is a bad exchange for the country, 
 and come back again to the fields and villages. 
 All this may happen, and yet the whole result 
 will be different, and the only question is whether 
 more than all this will not happen. The past 
 may glide away from us without any violent dis- 
 ruption of the old ties which still remain unbroken,
 
 218 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 or amidst a convulsive conflict leaving a legacy of 
 feuds behind it. Tlie show may remain when the 
 substance has departed, or both show and substance 
 may collapse together. But be this as it may, the 1st 
 of January 1889 will hereafter be looked back upon 
 as an epoch in our rural history and our national 
 life, when we stood at the parting of the ways 
 and elected to try an experiment which, whether 
 it strengthen or weaken the foundations of a system 
 which has lasted for eight hundred years, inaugu- 
 rates a social revolution not inferior in magnitude 
 to any which have occurred in England during the 
 last two centuries.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 /^AERYING back our retrospect of "the ancient 
 ^ rigimc" into the eighteenth century, we see 
 that the old is not divided from the new by any 
 fixed line of demarcation separating the two cen- 
 turies from each other. The boundary is not 
 chronological, nor yet perfectly straight. At sev- 
 eral points the old century overlaps the new one. 
 The change begins earlier in one place and later in 
 another : and here and there old habits and man- 
 ners run down into the modern age, unthawed by 
 the sun of progress which has melted everything 
 else around them. But they have lost one main 
 characteristic of the earlier period. As we con- 
 template the eighteenth century, one of the first
 
 220 THE OLD AXD THE NEW. 
 
 tilings to strike us is tlic air of repose which 
 breathes over it. It reminds one of the land of 
 the lotus-eaters, " in which it seemed always after- 
 noon." One generation succeeded to another, 
 but life continued just the same. The old man 
 saw in his age the things which he had seen 
 in his youth. That longing for confirmed tran- 
 quillity which Wordsworth speaks of as one of 
 the strongest instincts of our nature, might then 
 be satisfied. At the present day we never know 
 how soon any of our old landmarks, be they 
 customs, institutions, beliefs, or even the mere 
 features of nature, may be ruthlessly demolished. 
 We scarcely dare allow our affections to go out 
 from us to twine themselves round any external 
 object, for fear it should be suddenly torn up. To 
 1)0 afraid to love anything, for fear we should be 
 obliged to mourn for it, is one form of human 
 unhappiness for which heavy compensation of some 
 kind is due to us at the hands of progress. The 
 eighteenth century had little progress ; but then it 
 had little worry, and no doubt. The most ardent 
 Ritualist nowadays, says Mr Froude, feels that
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 221 
 
 the ground is hollow under him. The most san- 
 uuine Conservative knows that institutions are 
 everywhere on their trial, that authority is every- 
 where disputed, that subordination is everywhere 
 derided. But to the men of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury none of these disquieting elements presented 
 themselves. Everything around them breathed 
 of permanence, stability, and security ; institutions 
 were regarded as facts about which it was ridiculous 
 to argue. It was not supposed possible that we 
 could do without the Church and the Monarchy. 
 There was a reality and solidity about men's con- 
 victions in those days which must have been a 
 rrreat source of moral and intellectual comfort. 
 Happy they who lived in the prescientific age ! 
 Happy Old Leisure, sauntering by his garden wall, 
 and picking the leaves off the apricots ! Happy 
 old vicar, smoking his pipe in peace, unvexed of 
 Darwins and Colensos, scratching the head of his 
 faithful old brown setter, with his old single- 
 barrelled fiint-and-steel in the corner by his side ! 
 I am inclined to believe that with some qualities, 
 which the general consent of mankind has till quite
 
 222 TJIE OLD AND TllM NEW. 
 
 recent times esteemed highly beneficial to society, 
 the eighteenth century was more largely endowed 
 than its successor. I mean respect for law and 
 constituted authority as such, and that kind of 
 rational self-knowledge which recognises the facts 
 of human nature, and not only sees nothing de- 
 grading in subordination, but accepts it as the one 
 essential principle of all permanent political com- 
 munities. I hope I shall not be so far misunder- 
 stood as to be supposed to deny that there is any 
 other kind of earnestness. There is the earnest- 
 ness of curiosity and inquiry ; the earnestness 
 which seeks the law within the law. But there 
 is also the earnestness which comes of a simple 
 desire to perform our allotted duties under the 
 system of things which we find to be in existence, 
 and asks for no higher satisfaction than the con- 
 sciousness of having been successful. I cannot 
 help thinking that of this kind of earnestness there 
 was rather more in the past century than there 
 is in the present. The motto of Englishmen then 
 was Spai'tarii nactus es : and it was, I tliink, the 
 mixture of this simple sense of duty with the
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 223 
 
 somewhat tougher moral fibre of the period which 
 produced such men as Clive and Hastings and many 
 of our great Indian and colonial administrators, 
 with whom their duty to their country was an all- 
 sufficient motive of action and ample warrant for 
 the means they might adopt in the discharge of it. 
 
 When it is said that the eighteenth century was 
 not an age of faith, the statement can only he 
 received with considerable reservation, and in refer- 
 ence to a sphere of thought far removed above the 
 level even of the middle classes. " The sober piety " 
 of our ancestors has come in for its full share of 
 laughter. Yet it is doubtful if more solid fruits 
 were not borne by this uninteresting tree than are 
 produced either by the fervour of ritualism or the 
 inspiration of " Humanity." Whether it is a fact or 
 not that English work, for instance, has fallen off 
 since the eighteenth century in thoroughness and 
 honesty, I do not undertake to say ; but the affirma- 
 tive has been widely maintained, without, as far as 
 I know, provoking any serious contradiction, and 
 has been acknowledged with regret by some of 
 the warmest friends and admirers of tlie working
 
 224 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 classes. The evil, however, if it really exist, is not 
 confined to them. Small traders of every descrip- 
 tion are charged with selling and constructing 
 articles wliich are not wliat they represent them to 
 be ; and that old English pride in a good piece of 
 honest work which was once so general is said to 
 be growing rarer and rarer. If so, I cannot imagine 
 anything better calculated to make ns doubtful of 
 the superior religious earnestness of the present day. 
 The coarseness of private manners was only one 
 form of the general licence which was the inevi- 
 table product of the Ee volution. It was not till 
 late in the eighteenth century that society began 
 to recover from the moral shock occasioned by the 
 rupture of old ties, the rejection of old sanctions, 
 and the extinction of an old faith which followed 
 that event. The ideal, romantic, or imaginative 
 element — call it what you will — had been crushed 
 out of Church and State with the expulsion of the 
 Stuarts and the remodelling of our religious institu- 
 tions on a rational basis. The inevitable result was 
 an influx among the upper classes of both political 
 and religious indifference, which, where it did not
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 225 
 
 end in absolute scepticism, was wholly ineffectual 
 against the temptations of the world and the flesh. 
 The influence, in a word, of the English Revolu- 
 tion upon English morals was the influence of 
 all revolutions upon all morals in all ages of the 
 world. Political infidelity is their first fruit, and 
 social licence their second. But a change began to 
 show itself after the middle of the century. We 
 hear no more of such doings as went on with 
 Queen Caroline's maids of honour ; of such letters 
 as may be found in the correspondence of Lady 
 Suffolk. Mr Lecky has noticed, in a very inter- 
 esting passage, the concurrent influence of Wes- 
 ley and Lord Chatham in this purification of the 
 atmosphere. To these names may be added those 
 of Johnson and Cowper. Chatham in politics, 
 Wesley in religion, and Johnson and Cowper in 
 literature, were working for the same end. Chatham 
 infused a wholly new tone into the language of 
 public men. Wesley recalled society to some small 
 consideration for its eternal welfare ; and Johnson 
 showed how a man of infinite humour, robust 
 common - sense, and of a strong animal nature, 
 
 p
 
 226 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 could place them all at the service of religion and 
 worship. 
 
 We see the same mixture of good and evil, the 
 same moral indifference, and the same practical 
 excellence in the sphere of politics. The old 
 Cavalier, who represented feudal chivalry, the old 
 Whig, who represented classical freedom, were alike 
 extinct. In the place of the latter we had the 
 practical common - sense politician who wasn't 
 " squeamish," who saw his way to conducting the 
 business of the country without ideas, and to 
 making a good thing out of it for himself ; who 
 undertook, so to speak, the beef-and-pudding depart- 
 ment of government, and gave a kind of guarantee 
 that nobody should be worried about anything so 
 as to injure his digestion, if he would only abstain 
 from worrying others. "Live and let live," was 
 his motto. And of living he was prepared to set 
 a first-rate example. In place of the former we 
 had the spasmodic patriot, who tried hard, and 
 in one particular successfully, to make national 
 grievances stand him instead of loyalty, but who 
 felt himself communly in a false position, and
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 227 
 
 always had to cover the weakness of his logic 
 under sounding rhetorical generalities. Both alike, 
 however, had banished idealism from politics, 
 as it had been banished from philosophy and 
 theoloQ;v. The want of it made the Whigs mer- 
 canary utilitarians, and the Tories visionary de- 
 claimers. 
 
 But whatever the methods or the vices of the 
 governing class, the country had to be governed. 
 And the business of doing it infused a solid, prac- 
 tical, sagacious element into the English upper 
 class, in which the Continental nobility seemed 
 deficient. And we ought to be thoroughly thank- 
 ful, whatever be the origin we attribute to the 
 English Eevolution, that when they had got what 
 they wanted, our nobility proved equal to the 
 occasion. For though their cupidity and selfish- 
 ness may at one time have been dangerous to the 
 monarchy, the existence of their order in full vigour 
 and popularity was essential to the constitution. 
 A few words will explain our meaning more fully. 
 
 "Despotisms," says Dr Newman, "require great 
 men, constitutions jog on without them," The
 
 228 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 remark was perfectly just, though it was not 
 original ; nor does it express the whole truth upon 
 the subject. If constitutions do not want great 
 men, great men, it may be added, do not always 
 suit constitutions. The essence of a constitution 
 is tliat no very great degree of power shall l.)e 
 lodged in a single individual. And the highest 
 functions, as a rule, which a statesman can dis- 
 charge in it, are administrative rather tlian creative. 
 Of course there will be exceptional periods, when 
 the Minister of a constitutional State is, by tacit 
 consent, invested with much larger powers — when 
 he can originate and really govern. This was the 
 case with Mr Pitt; the union of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, for instance, having been entirely his 
 own idea, and carried by his own will. But if 
 we look back upon our parliamentary history, we 
 shall see tliat the most successful Ministers have 
 been men of very different calibre, — Walpole, Pel- 
 ham, Liverpool, Palmerston, unlike as they were 
 in other things, all resembled each other in this, 
 that their characteristics were strong common-sense, 
 great capacity for business, and an easy temper.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 229 
 
 They had not the creative or inventive faculty 
 which, under this sober and mechanical form 
 of government, is frequently a burden to its pos- 
 sessor. They were content to keep things as they 
 found them, and were satisfied with the dignity 
 of authority. The first Napoleon said of the Duke 
 of Wellington after the battle of Waterloo : " He can 
 never lie quiet — he will change the dynasty." The 
 Duke did not happen to belong to that class of great 
 men. But it shows what Napoleon expected from a 
 man of his exceptional genius. Bolingbroke did 
 belong to that class, and would never have found 
 any scope for his powers under a constitutional 
 government in quiet and ordinary times. 
 
 It is the same with what are called men of the 
 people, or men who without influence, without con- 
 nections, and without money, force themselves to the 
 summit of affairs. They will be imaginative, rest- 
 less, and daringly ambitious. The very struggle 
 has made them combative and sanguine. Men of 
 this kind are not the men to "jog on." Such 
 characters make great kings and conquerors, and 
 are fitted for the dictatorship of a great democracy.
 
 230 THE OLD AND THE KEW. 
 
 In constitutional States tliey arc likely to be 
 either useless or dangerous. The English aris- 
 tocracy produces just the class of men who are 
 wanted for the work in ([uestion. It is not am- 
 bition in tlie ordinary sense of the word that 
 leads them into politics. A political life comes 
 to them just as naturally as commerce to the 
 son of a merchant. They think no more of fill- 
 ing a public department than of taking the chair 
 at quarter - sessions. They are neither dazzled 
 by the prospect of power, nor intoxicated by the 
 possession of it. And the consequence is, that a 
 man in that rank of life is not obliged to be 
 gifted with extraordinary genius in order to attain 
 political power, nor, if gifted with extraordinary 
 genius, is it certain tliat political power will at- 
 tract him. From the aristocracy we get, as a rule, 
 the able, sagacious, business - like men whom the 
 country wants, but who wouhl not have foi'ced 
 their way upwards from a lower station ; not the 
 turbulent restless spirits who, if they take to pol- 
 itics at all, destroy institutions and change dynas-
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 231 
 
 ties. We want such men sometimes ; but in de- 
 mocracies they come too often, and hence their 
 proverbial instability. There are drawbacks, of 
 course, to an aristocratic system. We cannot ex- 
 pect such men to be abstract philosophers, to know 
 by heart Aristotle's 'Politics' or Mill's 'Political 
 Economy.' But there is no dearth of such know- 
 ledge at the present day among those who can 
 influence politics through the periodical press ; and 
 if the truth must be told, we are in danger rather 
 of having too much of it than of having too little. 
 
 I often think of the eighteenth century as a 
 broad rich plain lying between two volcanic ranges ; 
 a happy valley, rich in corn and wine and oil, to 
 say nothing of ale and punch, and, if defective in 
 those virtues which thrive best in a stonier soil, 
 not without a goodness of its own which demands 
 our genuine respect, and certainly pregnant with 
 results to which we owe a deep debt of gratitude. 
 It was not a century overburdened with delicacy 
 or scrupulousness of any kind, but bluff, hale, and 
 hearty; a century of great moral and mental tran-
 
 232 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 quillity, of some coarseness and animalism, and of 
 nnrulHed religious belief among the great masses 
 of the people ; a century in which abuses were 
 allowed to spread in prodigal luxuriance over all 
 our most venerable institutions, but in which the 
 landmarks were not removed, nor habits rudely 
 disturbed ; a century of strong men and strong 
 deeds, in which England rose to a predominant 
 place among the nations of the world, and fitted 
 herself to perform the great part which was in 
 store for her as the saviour of the liberties of 
 Europe. 
 
 Many of its characteristics lingered late into 
 the succeeding age. Rural life during the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth century must in many 
 respects have been much the same as in the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth. To a much later period 
 than this individuals still survived who had far 
 more in common with the Georgian than the 
 Victorian era ; while among the peasantry, at 
 all events, habits and customs and character had 
 -been transmitted unchanged from the rude fore-
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 233 
 
 fathers of the hamlet, whose epitaph is written 
 by Gray. Now, however, I think we are really 
 getting on the extrema vestigia of the ancient regime. 
 N'ow at length, for the first time, the destruction 
 of our ancient rural system is openly avowed as 
 their object by a powerful political party in this 
 country. Through all the changes we have ex- 
 perienced since 1832, reformers have never, till 
 within the last few years, proclaimed any inten- 
 tion of subverting it. Whatever they might think 
 or say to each other in private, no one of them 
 ever publicly stated that it was his object to crush 
 the Church and the landed gentry. This dead 
 set at "the squire and the parson," is an affair 
 of yesterday. It may be that it was certain to 
 come. But changes are not necessarily beneficial 
 because they are inevitable, or what a paradise 
 this world would be. At all events, it will scarcely 
 be denied that our old rural system had much in 
 it to touch the imagination, and appealed to a 
 class of sentiments not wholly bad. I am therefore 
 not without a hope that these pages may at least
 
 234 THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
 
 be found interesting, even to many who differ from 
 myself ; and that to recall to men's minds tlie class 
 of virtues, both public and private, which are proper 
 to an age of territorial aristocracy, when it is 
 allowed a fair field for its energies, showing that 
 in the progress to democracy the gain is not all 
 on one side, may not at the present moment be 
 labour altogether thrown away. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PUINTEU BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
 
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