he attempted to bring others, he declined to
risk his capital.

Mr. Tufnell mentions a man, more
adventurous, who took a farm in Wiltshire upon
liberal terms, and to the dismay of all
neighbours, brought his own ploughman and
two or three of his best hands with him.
"You are bringing burdens upon us! " cried
the farmers. " We have already more labour
than we know how to employ." The gentleman
persisted. In the winter his neighbours
as usual, turned off several men; the
newcomer engaged them at once—they were all
wanted for draining, fencing, and other works
essential to a well-conducted farm. In the
spring the men were wanted back by their
old masters, but they were permanently
engaged, and the surrounding farmers were
themselves compelled to seek for labourers
out of the limits of the parish. Industry
never begets want of occupation.

In fact, there can be no greater mistake than
to suppose that active minds and active bodies
set to labour upon land will quickly get through
all the work there is to do upon it. Every
improvement in agriculture, every new machine,
improves the condition of the farm labourer.
Wherever improved modes of cultivation and
machinery have been introduced, there has
been increased demand for labour; and the
work wanted being of a kind more or less
skilled, commands better wages. At the same
time that a machine relieves the workmen of
much physical drudgery, it creates a demand
for higher qualities—for intelligence and
trustworthiness in those who are to manage it.
It lifts the labourers, so far as its operation
extends, out of the state of unreasoning
drudgery, brings out their better faculties, and
procures for them that better pay which men
can earn whose heads are something better
than dead-weight. Agricultural machinery
affords men work in winter time; work under
sheds in wet weather; work when their bodily
strength fails by sickness or increasing years.
Machinery often creates a necessity tor more
men in a direct way. One man can sow
broadcast as much as a drill. But the drill
requires two men to attend upon it, one earn-
ing half-a-crown a day, the other two shillings,
and after that the hoe has to be handled.
Machinery, increasing profit, will increase
the extent of farming operations. But
whatever adds to the farmers's capital will add to
the fund at his command payable in wages,
and a general desire to get good workmen,
strong of hand or steady of head—whenever
there shall be free-trade in farm labour—will
help very considerably to put an end to the
scandal of low wages which is now inseparable
from the condition of our southern counties.
A gentleman occupying a farm which has
been in his family since the year 1772, has
shown by figures the increased demand for
labour caused by the increase of enlightenment
among the farmers. This is his " return
of the amount of labour per acre on a farm
in West Norfolk, where machinery is freely
employed, showing the gradual increase of
manual labour caused by improved cultivation,
&c., from 1772 to 1845." The average,
per acre, for the thirteen years ending 1785,
was six shillings and ninepence; for the next
five years, seven shillings and twopence; for
the next five, a shilling more; for the next
five, eleven shillings. For the five years
ending in 1810, nineteen shillings and six-
pence. For the five years ending in 1820,
twenty-three shillings and ninepence. For
the five years ending in 1830, twenty-four
shillings; and for the five years ending in
1845, one pound nine shillings and threepence.
The increase of machinery and every
improvement of cultivation is, therefore, a source
of direct gain to the labourer.

But improvements upon farms employing
only the listless men settled upon the parish,
or the weary men who spend an average
of ten or eleven hours a week (more than the
worth of a day's labour) in coming to
and from their work, will be effected very
slowly. What would the Manchester men
say if their towns were subdivided into a
number of small parishes, and the manufacturers
within those parishes were obliged to
ask every artisan before employing him, " To
what parish do you belong? " Mr. Chadwick
asked for the opinion on this point of several
manufacturers, always, of course, with the
same obvious reply. Mr. Whit worth, who
employed upwards of five hundred men in
machine-making, said, that if he had to put
the question which the agriculturist has to
put before he engages a workman, " To what
parish do you belong ? " or were governed by
any such consideration, he must reduce wages:
and he treated it rather as an absurd supposition,
that they could conduct their operations
at all under any such interference or such
obligations. Compare the case of the farm
labourer, whose strength is thrown away on
long walks to and from his place of work,
with the position of the labourers on Mr.
Whitworth's factory, who are hoisted up and
down by a steam-engine, to save them the waste
toil of going up and down the stairs! Two
or three thousand pounds, perhaps, are spent
upon machinery to supersede the ladders in a
pit shaft. " You are a humane man, mine
owner," we say. " I consult only my interest,"
he answers; " by thus lifting the men
up and down I save in labour six or eight
hundred pounds a year."

In some parts of England, in great part of
the counties of Lincoln and Nottingham, and
among the fields of Yorkshire, the farmers do
establish a free labour-market; they get the
sort of men they want and pay them well.
But over the whole country there is a scarcity
of proper cottage accommodation caused by the
present laws of settlement; and over the best
part of England there is established by the
same laws a system of restricted, enervated,
labour, that keeps wages down and cramps