to be at home when they were wanted by me, and their net profit from the cow will be equal to five shillings or six shillings a week at least. The same system obtains in these other places, and the results are thus recorded by eye-witnesses.

A. On the Duke of Rutland's estate, in Nottinghamshire, a tenant farmer says: "It is quite remarkable what effect the possession of a cow-gate has upon a labourer; he seems quite a different person; he does his work much better, in an honest, cheerful way, as if conscious that he was not forgotten by those who employed him."

B.-On Lord Harrowby's property the same system obtains. It was the opinion of one well qualified to judge of the results of this when speaking of the present movement, that "the concession of cow land was the solution of the whole question of the agricultural labourer.” C. In a certain district in an eastern county (as also in many parts of Yorkshire), most of the labourers keep a cow with the approval and to the advantage of the farmers. One eye-witness says of the men: "Although they get higher wages, they work far harder, and are cheaper workmen than those in the south, where I came from twenty years ago. We have no pauperism or 'poor people.' About two-thirds of the labourers keep cows. The cow club, of which I send you a copy of the rules, is managed by themselves, and prevents their being ruined by the occasional loss of a cow, which was of frequent occurrence during the time of the cattle plague. I wish I could see the same state of things in the south." Another eye-witness says: "The consequence (namely, of keeping a cow) is the splendid fellows, fine intelligent men there are about here, and the farmers consider them the cheapest sort."

D.-In Scotland, on the estate of Mr. Hope Johnson, in Dumfriesshire, the system of letting some of the most thrifty labourers have land to keep a cow is thus described in the report of the Highland and Agricultural Society :

"What we value chiefly in the system is its marked effect in producing and perpetuating an orderly, respectable, and well-conditioned peasantry. The problem which is generally looked upon as difficult of solution, is here solved with eminent success. It has been shown to be quite practicable, to elevate the labouring man, not only without burdening the farmer and the landlord, but to the manifest benefit of both, to foster small holdings without depressing agriculture or retarding improvement, and to combine permanence with progress."

Mr. Charles Stewart, under whose management this state of things has been brought about, writes to me thus, speaking of the present movement: "Those having cows kept as part of their wages, rarely proposed any addition to their wages, so much is the appreciation of this increased."

But there are many districts where, owing to the absence of grass land or other causes, such an arrangement as letting the labourers keep cows is attended with difficulty. Here it is just as easy to give him an interest in the soil by allotments and co-operative farming. The pages of the Agricultural Commission report teem with instances of

garden allotments and their good results. But here are three instances where something more has been done.

E. In a west-midland county a clergyman, a few years ago, found a certain undefined feeling of discontent among the labourers of his parish. After taking counsel, he set about a system of allotments of about one-third of an acre, which he is now extending in some cases of active thrifty men to as much as an acre--thus giving an encouragement and way of rising to the most capable-there was little or no difficulty in this district in meeting the rise of wages, and no ill feeling or trouble. The same might be done elsewhere at the cost of a little trouble, exterminating improvidence and pauperism.

I asked him

F. In a certain midland county, the clergyman of which was also a landlord and farmed as well, a most enviable state of things has been brought about, and is thus described by an eye-witness: "Most of the farmers pay by piece-work, and every man has land, varying from a rood to an acre; that is the limit. They always cultivate the land; cows are unknown; and Mr. T said he had known men get fifty bushels of wheat from their acre. if the farmers had objected as usual to the land being given, and he said they had, but that they had begun to discover that the men who worked best for themselves worked best for them, and that the feeling of wishing to do what was best for the labourer had strengthened very much lately. The T's (that is the landlord's family) are very splendid in every way, while living most simply themselves. I saw some magnificent farm-buildings, nothing cheap or contractlooking about them."

G. At Assington, in Suffolk, forty and twenty years ago respectively, Mr. Gurdon, the landlord, let two farms to the labourers to be rented on the co-operative, or more strictly, the joint-stock system. The results have been very remarkable, and would require a separate paper to describe, but suffice it to say that 57 labourers, out of a parish of 600, or perhaps about two-thirds of the workmen are shareholders, and thus have an interest in the soil; the shares have increased in value between 1000 and 2000 per cent. A general spirit of content aud comfort exists; pauperism is virtually extinguished, and the undertakings are succeeding admirably.

H. Then there is the power of establishing a co-operative store, which might save a labourer's family one or two shillings a week, and encourage habits of thrift, subordination, and federation. A gentleman farming in Leicestershire writes to me that he has established a co-operative store, which began with 137., and turned over 20007. last year; and they have lately taken seventeen acres of land, the rent of which is paid by the profits of the store, and let out in allotments by them. He is shortly going to publish his experience in the form of a pamphlet.

In all these instances there are two constantly recurring features: the presence at one time of some individual sympathy and intelligence; and as a result, the absence and virtual extinction of rural pauperism.

In conclusion and caution, it should be repeated that this question will everywhere be best settled by individual farmers and landlords in their respective farms and estates, according to the conditions of the locality. In most places only a little readjustment of present relations is required; in some parts hardly that. But where congestion of labour and bad poor law have aggravated the conditions, something more may be required. Even here the leading employers or a few intelligent landlords in the county might easily direct the movement right. There are two courses plainly open before the farmers and landlords of this country and of every county or district in it either by intelligent sympathy and the means herein practically described, to make this movement an opportunity of advantage and security to themselves and all connected with the land, or to let it be a source of ill feeling, harm, and loss. And one word of advice to those districts where the labourers have pressed unduly on the farmers, and taken undue advantage of the harvest to demand extortionate wages. In reducing the number of men after harvest, let there be no spirit of angry retaliation. Remember that if these men have been misled, they looked for the most part in vain to those who should have been their natural leaders. From some of the southern counties there may have to be a large migration; but let the men go with a God speed them; let landlords and others come forward where they are wanted to direct this exodus. The machinery is ready in the West of England Agricultural Labourers' Association; and more or less under the auspices of that association there exists already in the western counties of England a nucleus of intelligent landlords and farmers, practically persuading the rest, the effect of whose moderating influence and far-sighted policy may be seen even now, but will perhaps be more fully felt hereafter.

Mr. WILLIAM MORRIS, in his contribution on the question, said that his attention was first specially called to the condition of the agricultural labourer in his capacity as a poor-law guardian. One of the great points settled by the New Poor Law was that wages were not to be supplemented by poor law relief. The vicious results attending that system had been so clearly seen under the old law, that special care was taken under the new law to make it illegal. But more than we know, or can well know, this same vicious system lies at the root of much of our pauperism, and the enormous total of our poor law expenditure is affected considerably by it. There are two ways in which this is done: directly and indirectly. Directly, it is done through the reports of the medical officer, a medical report of illness being necessary before out-door relief can be given to a family, the head of which is an able-bodied man. Mr. Morris then referred to the appointment of medical officers in rural districts, and the most peculiar and often painful position these gentlemen found themselves in on accepting that post. In a parish in a union adjoining his own, when this agricultural labour question was first making itself felt, the guardian for that parish

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promised his men to get those who had families a weekly allowance of bread, through the relieving officer, if they would not join the union, or demand an increase of wage. But he told them, they would have to get a medical report for one of their family-a child would do. The result of this is, that in the most poverty-stricken villages the poor, on being overtaken by any real or fancied ailment, run off at once for the "doctor." Of course, going for the doctor means bread-much needed bread for the family-bread without the working for it, bread at the cost of the ratepayer. This he illustrated by some facts and figures supplied by the returns of his own union. Those who declaim against agitation, and who assert that the wrongs of the matter, if left to the farmer and his labourer, would right themselves, were mistaken. Pauperism does not beget manliThe labourer, whose pauperized body has begotten within him the pauperized soul, remains his life through the docile human animal known as the "day man." In addition to his docility he cringes before his "betters;" he holds in proper dread "the powers that be; he is ready to take his stand by the side of the cattle that are not human, on the farm, in prospect of a prize;" his hand is ever open for the charitable dole, and he propagates and swells the race to which he belongs. But, in addition to the day man, there is the piece-work man, one whose soul has not been crushed out of him. They were people who worked only by the piece, and many of whom throughout the year, except at the harvest season, did but little or no agricultural labour. Whilst they were doing the "cream" of the work, and getting for it the best pay, the day men continued on in their own monotonous round of lingering on, and in receipt of some slight addition only to their ordinary pay of ten shillings a week wages, given in consideration of the extra hours worked. The facility with which medical orders are obtained is the first great curse that falls upon both pauper and ratepayer. These orders cost nothing to the guardians, and are therefore as a rule thought less of, and given more freely than is a four-pound loaf of bread. Yet they are the first great stepping-stone to pauperism and our enormous poor-law expenditure. We cannot check the supplementing of wages out of poor rates until some alteration is effected here. Our case is with those who cannot help themselves, because they have no object in life, and nothing to live for but the workhouse and the pauper's pay; and it is they who so regularly recruit our pauper class. Any scheme by which the labour of the workman might be considered as so much invested in the farm, the weekly wage of even nine or ten shillings a week being looked upon as a draw on account, would work wonders, and help to bring back our rural districts to that condition which was the admiration of our poets of old. But he feared that when we find one employer of labour far-seeing enough to adopt this plan, we shall find a hundred struggling on in the old path. Improved cottage accommodation has been the talk and a recognised necessity for very many years, but we still find the village with decent homes the "hobby" of some land

lords. There are those who would have us look lightly on this agricultural labour question as a thing having no reality in it, and they tell us that below the noise of the professional agitator there is contentment and quiet; but it is the quiet of men with the soul crushed out of them by the pauper taint. It behoves us then to do our part in helping the agricultural labourer to occupy what new status he may have won. We may do this by recognising him as one who is no longer a serf, entitled to be intrusted with the value of his labour in a cash payment, rather than as one who is worth nothing more than the smallest modicum of wage supplemented by charity, perquisites, rates, and "pickings up," by means of which he ekes out a soulless existence until he is ready to go into the house, or, as a great favour, becomes the recipient of out-door relief, until his troubles and his trials are buried with him in a pauper's grave. This will be the first step. The second will be to give the labourer something to live and labour for, and that may be best done by giving him an interest, no matter how small, in his daily work. Thereby there would be built up between master and man a better, and truer, and far more profitable feeling than anything that could arise from the exercise of charity as a substitute for right, or the most perfect of poor-law schemes could bring about.

Mr. E. L. O'MALLEY read a paper on the same subject, and commenced by stating that his observations applied rather to conditions than to methods, and that they did not profess to be founded upon any special or practical acquaintance with the local or personal circumstances affecting the position of the agricultural labourer and his relations with his employer in different parts of the country. On the other hand, he had not limited himself by an exclusive regard for those abstract considerations which, according to the theory of the mere political economist, must determine the settlement of this, as of every other phase, of the controversy between labour and capital. He had preferred rather a middle course, and contenting himself with such information as fell to the lot of ordinary people, he had adopted the conclusion to which it seemed to point, and had proceeded upon the ground that the agricultural labourer's position was special and exceptional, and ought to be regulated by moral influences and the interchange of mutual good offices between him and the farmer. Such influences had already done much, and it would not be fair to resort to open war by means of labour strikes until a definite appeal had been made to influences. Difficulties had arisen in the way of making such an appeal, the labourer having assumed a false position at the instigation of professional agitators, and this had prevented the farmer from doing as much as he might have done to arrange the matter in an amicable manner. The proposition must come from independent sources, and the great thing was to make the parties. interested alive to their true interests. The labourer in particular would have to be taught to distinguish between the practicable and the impossible. He would require to be taught that he had no pre