In the years that elapsed between the close of the Napoleonic wars and the passing of the Reform Bill, as indeed often since, the debasement and misery of the agricultural poor rose to agony point, and soon after Thomas Wanless's marriage an outbreak of popular discontent, based on hunger, stirred a little the smooth surface of society. It became necessary, for very shame, to at least appear to do something for the pauperised masses on whose backs "society" was supported. Accordingly, a pseudo philanthropic agitation was started in the rural districts with the object of bettering, or rather of seeming to better, the peasant's lot. Mass meetings were held, parsons and even bishops threw themselves into the movement, patronised it, and sought to guide it to a consummation safe for themselves and their "dear church," itself then so great a landowner. For rustic miseries these high personages had one main panacea, and one only. This was not free land, fixity of tenure for the besotted farmers always so content to lie at the feet of their earthly lords; it was not disendowment of the Church and the distribution of its lands among the people from whom they had been taken originally by chicane and greed; nor was it the dismissal, with due payment, of those inheritors of the ancient marauders and appropriators of the soil, with all that is on it and under it, for whom the people have been kept as slaves for many generations. No; none of these things did the servants of the British deity, that idealisation of the sacred rights of feudal property, advocate. Far be such traitor conduct from them. Their cure for the agricultural distress was the "allotment system." To these reformers the free migration of labour, the abolition of that abomination of the poor law which prevented the poor from leaving their parishes, was as nothing compared with allotments. Landlords and parish authorities had but to permit the labourers to cultivate for themselves little patches of land, let to them at a good rent, and what opulence would these serfs not reach. In the agitation on this tremendous reform, Thomas Wanless took a keen interest, and then first felt sorely his inability to read. He tried to recall the lessons of his childhood, but could not, and was ashamed to apply for help. Few, indeed, amongst his neighbours could have helped him. His wife was as uneducated as himself, so he had to be contented with gathering the purport of what was going on from those he met at market or mill. As far as his mind could comprehend the question it was very clearly made up. He was convinced that all this agitation about professed interest in the down-trodden labourers would do them no good, and he doubted whether any good was meant.