THE VILLAGE LABOURER 1760-1832 THE VILLAGE LABOURER 1760-1832 A Study in the Government of England before the Reform Bill BY J. L. HAMMOND AND BARBARA HAMMOND ... The men who pay wages ought not to be the political masters of those who earn them (because laws should be adapted to those who have the heaviest stake in the country, for whom misgovernment means not mortified pride or stinted luxury, but want and pain, and degradation and risk to their own lives and to their children’s souls).... LORD ACTON. SECOND IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1912 TO GILBERT AND MARY MURRAY PREFACE Many histories have been written of the governing class that ruled England with such absolute power during the last century of the old régime. Those histories have shown how that class conducted war, how it governed its colonies, how it behaved to the continental Powers, how it managed the first critical chapters of our relations with India, how it treated Ireland, how it developed the Parliamentary system, how it saved Europe from Napoleon. One history has only been sketched in outline: it is the history of the way in which this class governed England. The writers of this book have here attempted to describe the life of the poor during this period. It is their object to show what was in fact happening to the working classes under a government in which they had no share. They found, on searching through the material for such a study, that the subject was too large for a single book; they have accordingly confined themselves in this volume to the treatment of the village poor, leaving the town worker for separate treatment. It is necessary to mention this, for it helps to explain certain omissions that may strike the reader. The growth and direction of economic opinion, for example, are an important part of any examination of this question, but the writers have been obliged to reserve the consideration of that subject for their later volume, to which it seems more appropriate. The writers have also found it necessary to leave entirely on one side for the present the movement for Parliamentary Reform which was alive throughout this period, and very active, of course, during its later stages.