Country life -- England; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Let any one imagine a body of men bound by one common interest, holding
in their possession all the population of several counties, and
subjecting their men to this rule. Can there be a more positive
despotism? The hind is at the mercy of the caprice, the anger, or the
cupidity of the man in whose hand he is; and if he dismiss him, as I
said in the early part of this paper, where is he to go? As Cobbett
justly remarks, he has NO HOME; and nothing but utter and irretrievable
ruin is before him. Such a condition is unfit for any Englishman; such
power as that of the master no man ought to hold. A condition like this
must generate a slavish character. Can that noble independence of
feeling belong to a hind, which is the boast of the humblest Englishman,
while he holds employment, home, character, everything at the utter
mercy of another? I have now laid before the reader the combined
evidence of my own observation and that of a great observer of the
working classes, both in town and country, in the north and the south,
and I leave it to the judgment of any man whether such a system is good
or bad: but I cannot help picturing to myself what would be the
consequence of the spread of this system of large farm and bondage all
over England. Let us suppose, as we must in that case, almost all our
working population cooped up in large towns in shops and factories, and
all the country thrown into large farms to provide them with corn--what
an England would it then be! The poetry and the picturesque of rural
life would be annihilated; the delicious cottages and gardens, the open
common, and the shouting of children would vanish; the scores of sweet
old-fashioned hamlets, where an humble sociality and primitive
simplicity yet remain, would no more be found; all those charms and
amenities of country life, which have inspired poets and patriots with
strains and with deeds that have crowned England with half her glory,
would have perished; all that series of gradations of rank and
character, from the plough-boy and the milk-maid, the free labourer, the
yeoman, the small farmer, the substantial farmer, up to the gentleman,
would have gone too;
And a bold peasantry, its country’s pride,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account