Chapter X: Part 10

The region in which Mr. Loftus lives is a disturbed one. On a recent Sunday a Land-League meeting was to be held in the town. It had been extensively advertised in the newspapers. On the day before the meeting was to be held the lord lieutenant issued a proclamation forbidding it. About two hundred dragoons and infantry and one hundred armed police arrived at the town, bringing with them provisions, as no farmer nor storekeeper would dare to sell any to them. One storekeeper had already been boycotted for not joining the Land League. On the appointed Sunday, after mass, or about one o’clock, some five or six thousand people came together, with bands of music. Five or six Roman Catholic clergymen were among them. The people desired still to hold the meeting by erecting a platform on some other spot. Two stipendiary, or salaried, magistrates were present, and with them the priests entered into an agreement that the soldiers and police should not interfere with the people if they listened to no speeches, but simply formed in an orderly procession and paraded in the town. The affair went off peaceably, and the people went quietly home, although feeling much discontent at the action of the priests. If they had not obeyed the contract, the priests would have retired and left them to the mercy of the armed men.

At dinner, one day, in the course of conversation, Mr. Loftus said, “The country is well enough if it was left alone.”

“But,” said I, “you approve perhaps of one agitator, O’Connell; you like the effects of Catholic emancipation?”

“O’Connell!” he cried; “the best man Ireland ever produced; a clever man. Not such a fellow as this Parnell, that nobody knows where he sprung from; not fit to clane O’Connell’s shoes in cleverness. O’Connell never allowed any quarrelling or disturbance. He kept up the agitation, but the people were kept in order. The repeal collections were kept up, but there was nothing like the burning, wounding, and killing that is going on in these times.”

I asked whether there might not be a home parliament for local affairs, and delegates to a general parliament. He answered that the people are so much given to contention that they could not carry on affairs. “If half a dozen of them,” he added, “come together at a poor-law meeting, they can’t behave themselves.”

* * * * *

After my return to Cork, an acquaintance advised me to visit a town in the southwest, where manners are more primitive. Accordingly I travelled thither, where women in a shop may be heard talking the Irish language. I went third-class. The railway terminated at the town. Falling into conversation with an intelligent fellow-traveller, he said that he had many men constructing a road. He was a steward or overseer. Looking out at the country, I asked, “Why are there no barns?”

“They have nothing to put into barns,” he replied. “They sell their hay in the fields, and thresh their grain and get it quickly into market. They even sell their straw sometimes to meet their rent. Then when spring comes the landlord endorses for them in the bank. This answers for one year. On the next year the farmer must go to a money-lender, to whom he signs a note for twenty-five pounds, receiving only twenty pounds.”

An intelligent Protestant, to whom I read this statement, made some corrections. He said that the landlord would only endorse for the rent, and the money-lender would charge ten or fifteen per cent.

I cannot substitute a name for that of my next witness. It is too well known, having been mentioned in Parliament. John Coppithorne is a Methodist. In politics, a Conservative. He says that if poor Beaconsfield were in there would not be any of these disturbances. He has a shop. He is a dyer, coloring frieze for country-folks. He rents several acres of land, and, finally, unfortunately for him, he lets “cars,” or keeps a small posting establishment. It is on account of letting vehicles to the police that he is boycotted. He has lived for fifty-two years in the town of Skibbereen, in the southwest, near Cape Clear. Skibbereen is the terminus of the railroad, but beyond lies Skull, the residence of Father Murphy. Father Murphy is a quiet Catholic priest. One day a police-officer went into his house to get him to use his influence with the people. But Father Sheehy was already in jail, and the people, seeing the policeman, flew to the idea that Father Murphy was to be apprehended. A riot impended, and a message was sent to Skibbereen for a reinforcement of police. Not many police-officers were there, but they sent as many as they thought they could spare, and unfortunate John Coppithorne let them have cars to convey them, having no idea that the people would break out as they did. Mrs. Coppithorne was extremely alarmed when the mob attacked their house. They began about nine P.M., and continued at intervals until daylight, or about half-past two. It was not alone the breaking of windows, doors, and shutters which was alarming, but the accompanying sounds. The women were dreadful, howling and laughing. They brought stones in their aprons and encouraged the men. Horns were blown all night on the surrounding hills,—conch-shells and cows’ horns. The military arrived by special train at three A.M., “and their arrival was as grateful as at Lucknow,” said Mrs. Coppithorne.

At an early hour of the night some of the mob suggested to the priest that if the armed police were withdrawn they themselves would disperse. The stipendiary magistrate agreed to the proposition. The stipendiary, or paid magistrate, commands the armed forces, soldiers and police, in case of riot. So the police withdrew to barracks, and the mob took the priest on their shoulders and carried him home. The magistrate retired to his hotel, and then the mob came back in double force. Having before confined their efforts to the upper windows, they now attacked the doors and shutters below, and plundered the shop.

After all it was a false alarm, as Father Murphy was not apprehended. Tears came into Coppithorne’s eyes when I asked him the amount of his losses. I hear that he claims damages to the extent of eight hundred pounds. He says that his business, worth perhaps two hundred pounds a year, is almost entirely ruined. Sometimes the people will come creeping in, perhaps with a permit to get frieze left to be dyed before the riot. There was a man in the shop while I was there, who wanted some frieze which some one had left for a petticoat. He had lost the ticket. The clerk declined to let him have it. “Only that the book was torn,” he said, “I could let you have it.” So the inconvenience of tearing books is not all on one side.

John Coppithorne is familiar with the pecuniary condition of the farmer. We could hardly expect him to be prejudiced in the farmers’ favor. It is therefore remarkable that he confirms the report of the desperate condition of many of them. Of working farmers around him, he estimates that ten per cent. have barns. About fifty per cent. sell their hay. Then horses and cows are fed in the winter on the young shoots of the furze, chopped up for the purpose. (It is like donkeys eating thistles.) Fifty per cent. of the farmers sell their straw, and buy guano and phosphates. These are the small, unthrifty farmers. The large ones buy these, and use barn-yard manure also. But about fifty per cent. are never forehanded enough to be able to make manure in the winter sufficient to keep their land up to the standard. Poor creatures that have only a few acres can be seen going security for each other in the spring to buy guano for their potato ground. They live on potatoes, fish, milk, and Indian meal gruel.

About the same percentage sell all their grain to meet their rent and pressing demands, and then buy, often on credit, to feed themselves and animals. They buy their seed grain on credit at a high rate, paying, if they pay at all, after the next harvest. Legal process is not infrequently used to oblige them to pay. If money had not been sent into Ireland, and relief afforded by benevolent persons, half of the farmers would not have had seed potatoes in the spring of 1880.

Others at Skibbereen said that the competition is too great when farms are to be rented, and some farms are entirely too small to support a family, even if they had them rent free. Near the sea-coast an existence can be eked out by fishing, but there are many in Ireland cultivating five acres or less.

During my visit to Skibbereen I saw a funeral. The corpse was followed by wailing women, for this old custom still prevails. They buried the body at the graveyard of the abbey, an old ruin, where the dead were buried coffinless during the famine. It was so desperate that these people, who have so great a regard for funeral observances, would bury their dead, in some cases, in fields near the houses, and the parish cart went round and took up dead bodies that were buried in trenches. This great famine was caused by the potato-rot. A gentleman told me that at that time nineteen-twentieths of the people rarely ate bread.

* * * * *

But whether Ireland has not long been subject to famines is to me a question. Within two or three years we have seen one averted by liberal contributions, and there was one in 1822, or twenty-five years before the great potato famine just mentioned.

While in the county Cork I met another person well qualified to speak of the condition of farmers. Michael McBride’s occupations were multifarious. He kept a shop, and a public-house distinct from it. He farmed many acres of land in different tracts. He sold his cattle at the fair. A public-house is a drinking-place, but McBride said that he drank no liquor himself. He was not a member of the Land League. He turned out a tenant and suffered by the League. While we talked in a retired corner of his “public,” he occasionally spoke in a loud voice, as though for others to hear, in this manner: “England is getting sixteen million pounds a year out of this unfortunate country, and plunging people into jail under the coercion act for saying nothing but the truth.”

McBride appointed an hour for me to call again. In the evening he had to go out and raise contributions for the poor of the parish. “A very wild summer, thank God,” he said, meaning a cold summer, unfavorable to agriculture. (“We thank God for everything,” said my landlady; “good, bad, or indifferent. One of my English cousins could not believe that there was any reality in thanking God for bad things.”) McBride said that he held much land.

“Of course you employ some one to work it for you?” I asked.

“Oh, bedad, yes,” he replied.

He said that there are men who sell their clover green when in want of money, and who will even take off two or three crops in the year and sell them green.

The poor farmer sells his hay, straw, and turnips to pay his rent, and therefore cannot make barn-yard manure in the winter. Guano was selling at thirteen pounds the ton. “It is a great evil to rely on,” said McBride. “The poor farmer may sell his oats at the glut of the market at five pounds a ton, and afterward buy Indian meal at seven pounds to feed his animals and himself.”

In February, McBride paid seven pounds per ton for hay, but in the preceding summer at harvest the same quality was less than two pounds per ton. He showed me a note which he had signed to prevent a small farmer or poor man from being turned out. Such must have two endorsers; but McBride’s signature was enough, because he was a man of means. At first he refused. The man cried, for he was to be served with a writ if he did not pay that day. The note runs in this manner:

“16th of June, 1881.

“On demand we jointly and severally, or any two of us, promise
to pay Messrs. Kelly & Co., limited, Patrick Street, Cork, or
order, the sum of £10, for value received.

“DAVID SMITH.
“MICHAEL MCBRIDE.”

McBride added that he supposed that he signed “a thousand a year,” and lost as “often as I have hairs on my head.” On the above note for ten pounds the borrower was to pay ten shillings interest and sixpence other charges for the use of the money for three months, which is over twenty per cent. annually.

He said that of private bankers and money-lenders at exorbitant rates there are twenty in Cork, some of them pawnbrokers. In various towns there are many poor people who pawn their clothing on Monday and redeem it on Saturday.

McBride said that the great cause of the present embarrassment is the three bad years of 1877, 1878, and 1879. Oats, wheat, barley, and potatoes were bad. Some oat-fields were never cut. McBride said that seventy per cent. of the farmers around Cork are unable to pay their debts, and would be bankrupt if forced to do so. They would need three good harvests to bring them up. “They will never pay the same rents again. Their condition is owing to high rents, bad harvests, and American competition.”

* * * * *

After leaving the county Cork I spent a few days in Dublin. From persons on the train thither and in that city I obtained information concerning other portions of Ireland. To this I add the testimony of an Irish gentleman well known in politics, whom I met in London.

A young man from the county of Limerick said that that county is all pasture. Not more than forty per cent. of the farmers in his neighborhood could afford to save hay and straw and feed cattle in winter for manure. Farms average from forty to fifty acres, some being as small as ten. He knew one man who farmed over three hundred acres, and paid three pounds and five shillings per acre therefor. He had two or three acres in potatoes, and the same in oats, but all the rest in pasture.

“Can he make money?” I asked.

“Not these late years,” he replied. “He is served with an ejectment because he can’t pay his rent.”

None of our farmers will be surprised that a man cannot make money on grass-land at a rent of about sixteen dollars per acre.

Another passenger, who was from Tipperary, said that, with few exceptions, the farmers of that county can keep cattle in winter and keep up their farms. Take the whole of Ireland, however, and farm-lands are deteriorating in value. In Tipperary and Limerick lies “the Golden Vale,” celebrated for its fertility. I had an impression that Tipperary was wild and riotous. In London I spoke to the political gentleman above alluded to, who knew the county well. In politics he is not in unity with Parnell, and is opposed to the Land League; but not, if we may judge by his conversation, to sanguinary measures.

“Tipperary,” said he, “has not of late suffered so much as some other districts. Thirty or forty years ago the farmers were entirely at the mercy of their landlords. They took the law into their own hands and fought for their farms, shooting down the landlords or their agents. Many of them were hanged or transported. The land bill of 1870,” he continued, “extended to all Ireland, restrains the landlord from evicting tenants without leases, unless paying them for their improvements.” He says that the present trouble is caused mainly by landlords demanding increased rents.

My intelligent fellow-traveller from the county Tipperary further said that the provisions of the proposed land bill, by which the tenant is to hold his land as long as he pays his rent, will do away with all abuses. The Three F’s of the land bill are: First, Free sale,—that is, the tenant is to have the privilege of selling his right in the farm; second, Fixity of tenure; and, third, Fair rent, to be determined by a court.

I remarked that this third F is against the free operation of trade; that everything should be sold at its value in the market. “No one puts such restrictions upon trade as you Americans,” he replied.

When I arrived at Dublin I lodged at two different temperance houses. In one I met a plain man from the county Galway, in the west. He kept a shop, and was a dealer in hides. He traded from town to town. He said that his priest and bishop were good men, and that young boys and girls were signing the pledge. Of the farmers of Galway he estimated that seventy per cent. are unable to pay their rent unless they sell horse, cow, and calves; and even then they would be left in debt to the shopkeeper. He complained greatly of the recent coercion act, under which, he says, worthy citizens are apprehended or are in danger.

One fellow-lodger was a Methodist minister from the county Fermanagh, in the north. He had been attending the Cork Conference. He complained of the increase of luxury among farmers in buying tea and bread and in the clothing of their daughters, and spoke of their spending two days a week at market, and five or six shillings each time in treating each other.

“But your congregations are not of this class?” I said.

“Indeed they are,” he answered. “There are plenty in my congregation who come home tipsy every market night.”

He afterward took out change and called for a bottle of ale. They sent out and got it for him.

I was much interested in the conversation of two men who were dining at the house. One of them, a young man, said that the three F’s would not satisfy the Land-Leaguers. They wanted the extermination of the landlords and the possession of the land. The other did not agree with him. He said, “It would be a nice thing for you to be paying two pounds and ten shillings for land, and a Land-Leaguer over the fence be getting it for half the money. I am an Orangeman,” he added, “and the son of an Orangeman, and the grandson of an Orangeman, yet I am greatly in sympathy with the poor, suffering tenantry of this country.”

He said of himself that he had been in the army nine years; that he was a landlord in a small way, five or six hundred pounds a year; and that he was now lying out of rents. Rather than disturb tenants he had paid as high as ten per cent. for money, and “glad to get it at that.” He was originally from the county Cavan, northwest of Dublin. He said that the average size of farms there is about twelve acres. Some have thirty. About twenty per cent. of the farmers own horses. Many keep donkeys, but these are unfit for farming. They put out manure with jennets, which are not fit for ploughing. The poor farmer must wait until the richer one has done ploughing so as to hire horses, and then the land is ploughed shallow and injured. Both speakers were agreed on the trouble of hiring horses. You must pay ten shillings a day for a pair, feed them and the ploughman, and give him several glasses of whiskey, added one. If you have cash in hand, you can get horses when you will; but the small farmer cannot pay until he has harvested his crop. He generally pays labor in exchange for horses.

A suggestion that the British government should buy the lands of Ireland, rent them for the space of thirty years, and that the people should then become possessors, met with some favor. The Irish politician whom I met in London found two objections to this plan: First, that it would take from the country the cultivated class; and, second, that for thirty years it would drain the country of money.

ENGLISH.

I spent a few weeks in England in 1881, and visited three agricultural regions in the east, the north, and the south. An article on the last is to appear in _Harpers’ Magazine_. The following is drawn principally from my visit to the east. Some account of my stay in the north and of a few days in a manufacturing county may appear hereafter.

My authority for the statements in the following article is almost entirely notes taken at the time, assisted in a small degree by recollections. But it cannot be assumed that this essay is without faults.

With regard to another country, I was advised to tell what I saw and how it impressed my mind, and not to endeavor to draw conclusions. But what a traveller sees and hears is greatly influenced by his own opinions. He goes to a foreign land, and if of different religious institutions from his own, he inquires on this point; of a different form of government, he asks political questions. He notices, also, differences in dress, food, and manner of living.

The first family with whom I boarded in Huntingdonshire was that of Mr. Jackson, a carpenter, who, besides working at his trade, rented a few acres. His wife, who was a farmer’s daughter, had a small dairy of three cows. Jackson appeared to have a splendid constitution. He was short and somewhat thick-set. He began his trade at eighteen, and was an apprentice five years and a journeyman three, when, having put by some money, he married at twenty-six. His wife was near thirty. One of them said that they had prospered with the help of the Lord.

Mrs. Jackson also had been able to save something wherewith to furnish a house. She learned a trade, and was also companion or lady’s-maid to sick ladies and those going to Brighton. One of them made her a wedding present of neat china.

Jackson and his wife have four children,—the eldest about six, or as she says, “Four little children, not one of them able to put on a shoe nor a stocking.” She attends to her dairy, boards the apprentice, and has no servant.

Their children are sweet and clean. Three of them go to the public school in the village. It is called the national school. Mrs. Jackson gave the eldest three pence to pay for their instruction for a week; which is at the rate of about twenty-four cents a quarter for each of them. The penny is a trifle over two cents, the shilling a little under a quarter of a dollar; but in turning sterling money into our own, it will avoid repetition to consider the English penny as two cents, and four shillings as a dollar.

The Jacksons’ house seemed a perfect palace compared to that of any working farmer that I saw in Ireland. Coming freshly from that country, I thought it must be the gem of the village, but I was mistaken. The busy activity of the Jacksons, who have a young family to keep, was more like what I have seen at home than what I saw in Ireland.

The house has a peculiar name placed on the front, something like Hallelujah House. Doubtless it was built by a dissenter. I saw another bearing title Bunyan Lodge.

A lodging-room was assigned to me, and I ate by myself in one of the front rooms below. (Thus to take lodgings is very common in England.) Jackson and his wife ate in the kitchen. When they had finished, she gave the apprentice what she chose. My room had strips of carpet on the floor, neat white curtains at the window, a suitable toilet service, linen sheets and pillow-cases. There stood in it a neat red chest with iron bands at the corners, and a white fringed cloth covering the top. It was locked, expressive of thrifty housekeeping.

Jackson and his wife do not go to the gray Church of England, which, with its spire, overlooks the trees. They attend the brick chapel, being Independents.

After he had taken me to see his calves and pigs, I asked him what proportion of the farmers in the neighborhood belonged to the Church of England.

He answered, “About one-half. I think that is just about the proportion that voted last year.”

This answer amused me much, but I feared that his wife would not understand why I laughed.

“You mean to say,” I said, “that large landed proprietors expect those who rent from them to go to church?”

“Yes,” he said, “or they would not rent to them.”

“Of course,” said I, “it is not put into the leases. But how can they know how they vote now that you have the secret ballot?”

“They go round and ask them, and if they would not promise, they would lose their farms. Many a farmer has been turned out because he would not vote for his landlord’s party.”

On another occasion I spoke to him of the wars which England had lately waged in Asia and South Africa, and Jackson spoke of the deficit in the finances when the Liberals came in. He said that he believed their country has had to smart very severely for unnecessary wars and bloodshed, and added, “Because it was a smart little country, what business had we to go and say to other nations, ‘You shall do as we please’?”

* * * * *

I did not stay many days with the Jacksons. Mrs. J. considered the burden of a dairy and of young children to be enough without taking lodgers. I was recommended to the house of Mr. Benton, the principal farmer in the village, and a friend called with me and introduced me to Mrs. B., who after an interval for deliberation consented to take me as a boarder at their family table.

Benton farmed about seven hundred acres, but not all in one tract. He owned a small part, and rented from various persons. One large farm he had taken at a heavy rent, and he was worried in these hard times. He used to follow the plough when a boy, but he cannot now, having so much to do in walking around and superintending work.

Mr. and Mrs. Benton adhered to the Established Church. He began to attend Sunday-school early, perhaps at two years, and had attended ever since, he being fifty, and a teacher. He was church-warden, and the most considerable parishioner in attendance; but was not on equal visiting terms with the clergyman.

He was more reserved than his wife; he said that the English did not incline to make new friends. He seemed to hold to the same opinions that he cherished in early life; to be of warm and constant attachments, and not free from prejudice. He said that Ireland should be sunk for twenty-four hours and repeopled with English and Scotch; that the reason the poor-rates are so heavy in Ireland is that the people are so lazy. He declined to tell to which political party he held, saying that the ballot is secret. He remarked of ourselves that he wished “the Americans would let our things go in there free, same as we let their things.”

The Bentons had seven children, five of them daughters. The eldest son was twenty-one, and was actively employed attending to farm operations. The girls had taken music lessons, and could play upon the piano. The eldest two were away learning dressmaking, and Mrs. Benton thought that she might be able to get a place as lady’s-maid for one or more of her girls.

Mrs. Benton had a large house, kept in good order. She was tall, fair, good-looking, active, and sprightly. She said that she “would rather have a penny of her own _hearning_ than tuppence that anybody should give her.” She did her housework with the help of the young daughters left at home. She said that, as a general rule, the tenant farmers had brought up their children too high, had hired servants, and now that these hard times had come, they had failed.

But Mrs. Benton’s housework is not like that of the wife of a large farmer in Pennsylvania. She does not board any of the farm hands; the only thing of the kind that they do now is to give them their beer in “’aytime.” She hires a woman to help wash. In summer they wash about once in eight weeks, and in winter more rarely, having plenty of clothes. The washing is done in two days, Saturday and Monday. Mrs. B. and her daughters do the ironing, though sometimes she puts out a frilled petticoat. They iron only the starched things; the others are mangled.

Nor does Mrs. Benton have the labor of milking, for it is done by one of the hired men. In the care of poultry she has the assistance of the shepherd’s wife, who raises chickens at their own house. Mrs. B. furnishes feed, and pays her eight cents for every fowl that she raises, and four for every twenty eggs that she brings her. She pays her own daughter a trifle for the eggs which she brings in at the home-place.

As regards the number of meals that she gave her family, we had four daily; for, in addition to the afternoon tea, we had a late supper. I noted one. All the young children had gone to bed, for Mrs. Benton was an excellent house-mother. For supper, we had onions, soft cheese, bread, cold pork, stout for the mother to drink, and ale for the father. After supper, Benton read aloud a small portion of the New Testament; the son of twenty-one before going to bed kissed his mother and bade his father good-night, and the daughter kissed both parents.

Mrs. Benton asked a blessing at meals: “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us thankful, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.” Thanks were returned by the young children. One said, “Thank God, father and mother, for a very good tea. Amen.”

Mrs. Benton delivers tracts. She takes them to dissenters’ houses; for the plan on which “the church” acts seems to be that all these are only stray sheep from their fold. They are indeed parishioners. Jackson, the carpenter with whom I boarded, as he rented land, was obliged to pay tithes for the support of the clergyman, although he himself was an Independent or Congregationalist.

Though she is a church-woman, Mrs. Benton tells me that one of her uncles is a bitter dissenter. He would not open a prayer-book, and even objected to the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer at the close of another supplication.

FARMS AND FARMERS.

This village where the Bentons lived closely adjoins the fenny or swampy land of the east of England. Said Benton, “Perhaps a hundred years ago the fens grew nothing but reeds and rushes and produced a quantity of wild fowl.” “All the geese in Lincoln fens” I had before heard of. The water is now kept out of the fens by means of steam-engines. This level land is well fitted for tillage, but bad weather had been very unfortunate for the wheat farmer. He generally holds more land than the dairy farmer, but he had been suffering from a succession of wet harvests. Before the abolition of the corn laws, high prices were kept up by a duty on foreign grain, but now the farmer cannot compete with our Western grain. An experienced man told me that the man who held even as high as one thousand acres was going behind every year.

In the summer of 1881, before the harvest was gathered in, I was told that there had not been a dry harvest since 1874. Some idea of what an English summer can be was given to me by Benton, the farmer with whom I boarded. He said that in 1879, at a Royal Agricultural Show near London, the farm implements were up to the hub in mud, and boards were spread for people to walk upon. In meeting, some would get shoved off up to the knees in mud. Men did not go round offering to black shoes, but with pails of water to wash off the mud. Yet there were thousands there.

The average of wheat raised in England is much greater than ours. In this country we do not hoe wheat and then weed it. But the production of England is scarcely half the amount required for the population. In 1880 the amount raised was sixty-four millions of bushels; the amount needed, one hundred and seventy-six millions. In 1881 they hoped to get one hundred millions of their own produce. One of my friends said that they would have starved the last year or two but for America.

In considering the English climate it is well to remember the high northern latitude. There is no city on our continent, not even Quebec, which is so far north as Paris. London lies in the latitude of Newfoundland and Labrador. Whether wet climates like that of England and Ireland can successfully compete in wheat-raising in the long run with our drier ones may well be doubted.

Another acquaintance spoke to me of the depressed condition of this district. He said that within a radius of six miles, six large farmers, cultivating three or four hundred acres each, had failed since the last harvest. “For four years,” he added, “the seasons have seemed to alter,—snow and rain fell in seed-time; there was little or no sun to mature the grain at harvest. There were floods of water covering acres of ground, so that one farmer holding perhaps five hundred or more acres, that had also been cultivated by his father and grandfather, lost in three years about twenty thousand dollars. Then he took his remaining capital and went into other business.”

It was surprising to one accustomed to the small farms of the fertile district in which I live to find such large farmers as many of the English. Said one of my acquaintances in Huntingdonshire, “One who farms fifty acres is scarcely called a farmer. He farms a little land. In another county I know a farmer who holds fifteen hundred acres.” The tendency of course is largely to increase the number of farm-laborers, while diminishing the number of those who farm themselves.

The farmer with whom I boarded employed a large number of hands, forty I think, in the spring. In July he had four men hoeing turnips, potatoes, “mangles” (mangel-wurzels?), and kohl-rabi. He had also about eleven children pulling weeds out of wheat, barley, and oats.

He kept twenty working horses, and with them had eight or ten hands. In the earlier season he had twenty hands hoeing wheat, barley, oats, beans, and peas. He had a shepherd to look after about two hundred sheep. He employs some women, girls, and boys. In the early morning I heard a peculiar cry as of a boy calling the cows, but he was crying to keep away the birds that depredate on the wheat,—linnets, sparrows, and blackbirds in the hedges. Benton also employed hands to go over fields that were to be planted in potatoes, turnips, buckwheat, and to pick twitch out of them. This, he said, is a wild and very troublesome grass, that fills the ground with roots, so that nothing else can grow.

I have just mentioned buckwheat. Benton had about thirty acres in this grain. It is fed to pigs and other animals; he said that he had never heard of its being eaten by men.

One of the most surprising things to me was the short number of hours that the farm-laborers made. That men should quit farm-work in July at or before six in the evening was novel to me. But all the work that is possible Benton puts out by the piece.

* * * * *

The price of land in this arable region is differently reported. One told me that it can be bought in fee simple for from two to three hundred dollars per acre. Perhaps this is the fen land and more valuable. The village in which I boarded was at a small distance from the fens. Land around this village sells at from one hundred to five hundred dollars per acre, but the latter are nice bits around the village. Land can be rented in this or the fenny region for farming at about nine dollars per acre. The tenure on which lands are held it was hard for me to understand. For instance, I was told that copyhold is nearly as good as freehold. At some length a friend endeavored to explain to me copyhold fine arbitrary, and then said that copyhold fine certain is more desirable.

In the depressed condition of farming of which I have spoken, it has been found that grazing and dairy farms are more profitable than grain. The abolition of the corn laws, said a friend, made bread cheap and enabled the mechanic and manufacturer to live, and they can buy more meat than before, and grazing and dairy farms are very profitable. Grain, which can readily be transported by sea, comes more closely into competition with the English grain than meat does.

One of the persons whom I met in Huntingdonshire was a retired farmer, and must have been a successful one. When he began to farm the fen land, that which he held had lately been brought under complete drainage, and was comparatively new. About 1835, on twenty-four acres of land he had the exceptional crop of sixty-four bushels of wheat to the acre. He has often grown four hundred bushels of potatoes to the acre on twenty-five acres, and he thought that his average yield had been three hundred bushels. He has had potatoes growing to the height of three feet, level as a floor, and not a weed to be seen. “There should not be a weed seen in an acre. I have grown,” he continued, “one hundred and twelve bushels of oats to the acre, and did not think that I had a crop under eighty-four. However, I did what none of you Americans do. In the latter part of my time, when I farmed only one hundred acres, I used six thousand dollars a year (twelve hundred pounds) in fertilizing my farm. Thus I bought six thousand dollars’ worth of grain and fed animals, especially pigs. Further, I sold the best of my wheat, oats, and potatoes, and consumed all the rest of my produce on the farm. I find no one who has fed so much on one hundred acres.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Benton took me one evening to see a steam-plough or cultivator at work. It did the ploughing well here when the weather was sufficiently dry. It was an immense affair. There were two steam-engines, one on each side of the field, sending the cultivator back and forth. The whole cost of the machine (including the van for the men to sleep in) was about ten thousand dollars. The charge for ploughing was three dollars per acre (twelve shillings), and the farmer furnished coal and perhaps also one hand. The men who brought the plough boarded themselves. They were making long days, from four in the morning to nine at night. By working until ten, they could cultivate twenty acres per day, and in these high northern latitudes summer days are very long.

* * * * *

During my short stay in the east I heard the price of a few articles, principally farm products. Mrs. Jackson, wife of the carpenter with whom I boarded, had prepared for me (in July) a very nice sparerib of pork, for which she paid eighteen cents per pound. She thought that no mutton could be bought under twenty. She had understood that meat was dearer than with us and clothing cheaper. Bread was cheap, she said. But I have before quoted the saying that they would have starved lately but for America.

“After midsummer is turned,” said Mrs. Jackson, “butter grows dearer. The pasture is shorter, and milk will not keep.” It was then selling at thirty-two cents the pound, but last summer it was dearer. At supper she and her husband had a large piece of good cheese. I heard that the best American was bringing sixteen cents (eight pence). Leicester cheese, which used to cost about twenty-four cents, no longer sells here.

Benton, the farmer, said that American hams are very poor. I endeavored to inform him how finely swine are fed on corn in Illinois, but he said that the difficulty is not in the feeding, but in the manner of curing the meat. For American bacon they thought that they paid thirteen cents.

In conversation, Benton spoke of eleven fat beasts (beeves) that would have brought two hundred and fifty dollars last year, but had sold much lower this year, on account of the American beef coming in.

As regards milk, a retired farmer told me that he used to sell it at about ten cents the imperial gallon in summer and twelve in winter, and he had to convey it five miles to the railroad station. It had now risen a penny the gallon.

THE CHURCH AND THE RECTOR.

Two adjacent villages formed here one parish, which may be called Haddenham cum Stonea, from said villages. The living was a good one, as the rector received his house and six thousand dollars a year. This income was principally drawn from tithes, which amounted to about two dollars per acre on the arable land in the parish, and to near five thousand five hundred dollars yearly. From glebe land he drew the remainder of his income. He was, however, bound to keep his house in repair, and for the last eighteen months he had not drawn his full income.

Benton was the principal parishioner in attendance at church. His family, however, did not associate on equal terms with that of Mr. Rounce, the rector. On the occasion of a wedding-breakfast, Mr. Rounce had taken a meal at the farmer’s, and Benton had dined at the rectory on the occasion of a church meeting. But Mrs. Benton did not expect the rector and his daughters to associate with them equally. I heard an intimation that the rector was originally poor, but no one who attended the church was now on a social level with himself.

I attended one Sunday afternoon. The congregation was not large, and very few looked well-to-do. The number of communicants, I was told, was over sixty. One young man, who came into church, was showy in appearance. He was neatly dressed, with plenty of large, silvery-looking buttons. He was the rector’s footman.

The church was a gray stone building. Though plain, its appearance over the level fields was agreeable. The curtains within were rather shabby. From one at the end the rector emerged, so I suppose it concealed the vestry-room. In appearance Mr. Rounce, the rector, was blustering and brawny. His lungs seemed brazen, but perhaps some of the congregation were deaf. He wore a white linen robe, and upon his shoulders behind lay a mantle or hood of black, faced with magenta color. The text of the sermon was, “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” I took some brief notes, which I reproduce. They contained one very happy, and, as adapted to the congregation, one very unhappy, remark. He said that it is difficult to continue piety amidst the cares of daily business. “I was going to compare this to tar, to being surrounded by tar; very dirty, very sticky.

“There are people who shut themselves up in cells with one small bed, a chair, and a candle. This is the way that many are taking to become fervent in spirit, forgetting the first part of the text, diligent in business. In my young days there were but six monasteries and nunneries in all England, Scotland, and Wales; now they number over six hundred.

“There are some who think that their religious exercises should be confined to Sunday. There are various things that we shouldn’t do on Sunday; it’s quite right we shouldn’t read newspapers on Sunday. But religion has thus been defined: it is the art of being and doing good.”

As we left the church, I asked its age, and the rector said that it was of the time of Henry VII. (who died in 1509). What is old has a great attraction to the people of our new country, and I looked in the churchyard for interesting monumental stones. The oldest that could be deciphered bore date 1672, and seemed to be that of a great pugilist. The gravestones were not numerous and showy. Some one told me afterwards that those who attend the church are the poorest of the poor, and are generally buried without tombstones.

Concerning the rector, I ventured to draw some conclusions as follows: Mr. Rounce is a strict Sabbatarian, between two fires,—Dissent on the one hand and High-Churchdom and Papacy on the other. In the eyes of a zealous incumbent of the English Church, even of a zealous low-churchman, all the people living in the parish are his people. But many, very many of them, are like lost sheep wandering on the barren mountains of Dissent, and so long have they refused to hear even the church that they have become to him like heathen men and publicans, and with them he does not wish to hold intercourse. He employs members of his own church, however, to distribute tracts among them as regularly as among his chosen people, even although these dissenters are full communicants in their own “chapels.”

I was allowed to visit the rectory grounds and afterward to see the house itself, through the courtesy of an assistant in the National school, who was also a servant in the rector’s family. The house was not so much distinguished by the elegance of its carpets and other furniture as by the number and variety of its cabinets (among them I may reckon a great carved chest), by the quantity of china displayed, and to some extent by paintings and natural history collections. The ladies were absent, but I met the rector for a moment or two, and it seemed to me that he considered me to need pruning or cutting down. But he was kind enough to allow the lady’s-maid who conducted me to find for me in the library one or two works which I wished to consult, and she was sufficiently intelligent to aid me, and obliging enough to do so.

When we walked through the garden I observed that a net was spread to protect cherries from the birds, and that currants were trained to the top of the wall, about eight feet.

Mrs. Benton, the farmer’s wife, received a letter from the former rector. She said that he had removed to the “’op” country, to Kent. She described him as a tiny little man, over eighty, a very stanch liberal in politics; a clever, very learned man.

While I was still in the village, Mr. Rounce’s two daughters had a lawn-tennis party on their grounds, and the guests could be seen from the road. Three of the men appeared to be “in their shirt-sleeves.” I learned at Mr. Benton’s that the guests would be about fifty in number, the farmer’s young daughters being permitted to look on. It was thought that the refreshments would be tea, coffee, and cakes, handed round,—Miss Rounce being a teetotaller.

DISSENTERS.

A rector of the Established Church, whom I met upon a railroad train, spoke to me of there being here one hundred and fifty different religious sects, but the number seemed incredible. Afterwards, however, an acquaintance pointed out to me the list in Whitaker’s Almanac for 1881. This list is headed

“Religious sects. Places of Worship.

“Places of meeting for religious worship in England and Wales
have been certified to the Registrar-General on behalf of
persons described as follows.”

And the list, instead of numbering one hundred and fifty only, goes up at least to one hundred and sixty-nine.

The dissenting chapel in the village which I am endeavoring to describe was a brick edifice, and the yard contained a number of conspicuous monumental stones. Two prominent sects were united to compose the congregation, and the number of communicants was one hundred and thirty. I call the building a chapel, as the English do; nothing is a church, in fashionable speech, that does not belong to the establishment.

There was within the bounds of the parish a third “meeting-house,” where the assembly is composed mainly of a few members of a religious body, generally respected, but declining in numbers. I had a letter of introduction to one of the members here, and when I spoke of her to Mrs. Jackson, the carpenter’s wife, Mrs. J. told me that I might be able to receive an introduction to others by means of her to whom the letter was addressed, who was a person of education and the wife of a retired farmer.

“Now,” I asked, “how likely shall I be to see the rector?”

“Oh, not at all!” There is such a strong feeling against dissenters is one reason why I should not meet him.

On the other hand, a dissenting minister, in speaking to me of the Established Church, remarked that the feeling against it is more political than religious. There is nothing, he added, in the doctrines of the Church of England that is repugnant to a vast number of people who attend dissenting churches; the objection is to a religious denomination which is elevated by the state over others, and consequently has greater social power and prestige.

But one whom I met at a neighboring town spoke more strongly. He was a retired farmer who had travelled in our country. He brought forward the following objections to an established church. The people have little or no choice as regards their own clergyman; they have no control over their own forms of worship; and all spiritual life is destroyed in the church.

In further conversation he said, “Can I forget that I am socially persecuted because I am a dissenter; that my father was commercially persecuted for being a dissenter,—he could not rent a farm on equal terms; that my grandfather was probably excluded from holding office for being a dissenter; and my great-grandfather, if a dissenter, would have been thrown into jail for attending a conventicle. But it may be said, ‘Why rake up old sores?’ Simply because the same persecuting spirit remains, and if the dissenters were not so strong in numbers, and consequently in political power and wealth, the same things would be done again.” He added that no farmer should be a dissenter. He himself belonged to a Liberation society. He wondered at the apathy of the Americans in not sympathizing with them in their efforts against an established church. (I have given my friend’s words from my notes, but I suspect that the date at which Quakers and others were imprisoned in England was not so recent as that of the gentleman’s great-grandfather.)

The following anecdote was given to me by another person, also a retired farmer. It concerns a man of some distinction, now dead, and who did not bear the name which I assign him. This as well as others are substitutes. My friend told me that when Carter Gray rented a mill from Lady Letitia Robyn he also rented from her a large farm, which he conducted to much profit. He built schools in his neighborhood and also a dissenting chapel, and the clergy got at the Lady Letitia and induced her to take the farm from him. But she did not take away the mill. Carter Gray was so popular that although a dissenter he was appointed a magistrate. The lord lieutenant of the county has the recommendation for magistrates and had declared against a dissenter, but Lord John Russell is supposed to have been in Mr. Gray’s favor. “Lord John was a great liberal,” added my acquaintance. “Until his persevering action in Parliament the dissenters had a hard time of it.”

* * * * *

In the English village I describe, I called at the modest residence of the dissenting minister. He had studied at the Baptist Theological Seminary in London. I found him to be interested in several of our home authors. Among his books were the complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (London: Bell & Daldy). He said that there is no one he honors more than Emerson, except, perhaps, their own Carlyle. He said that he had in his theological library Channing’s works and another man’s, Beecher,—Ward Beecher. “I have a great admiration for that man.” He had Lowell’s poems, and rejoiced in Lowell. He spoke of the “Biglow Papers,” and of the pious editor’s creed, repeating,

“I du believe in principle,
But oh! I du in interest.”

TAXES AND TITHES.