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THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER-JOSEPH ARCH.

freedom of thought and action; but the condition of the farm labourers was against their combining with any hopeful result. They were intellectually uninformed; they seemed to be a body too numerous to command employment at other wages than the farmers or landowners were able or willing to pay; and their employment was to a great degree dependent not only on the seasons but on the nature of the soil and crops and the system of farming adopted in the county in which they happened to be settled. They were for the most part believed to have little more ability to assert their "rights" or to represent their wrongs and to seek redress by any organized method than the teams they drove or the cattle they tended. The wretched cottages in which their families herded together, the privations which they endured, their hopeless, aimless lives, which after years of ill-paid labour had no prospect but the workhouse-all these things were known, and people read about them in newspapers; but the very fact of their existence, and of the slow endurance of those who suffered them, made it seem impossible that there should ever be an agricultural labourers' union. “A bold peasantry a country's pride" existed only in the imagination of the poet. The artisan of the large towns, sympathize as he might with the poverty and sufferings of Giles Clod pole, could scarcely bring himself to think that unions and committees and combinations were meant for him; and yet it was an established, though an unremembered fact, that Giles or George, when he left the plough or the byre and took the queen's shilling, had soon developed into a sturdy soldier who had fought the battles of the country -or of statesmen-in almost every clime, and with almost unvarying resolution, courage, and success. The time had arrived for the movement in favour of an improved condition of the population to reach the tillers of the soil; and it was first to touch South Warwickshire.

Few people in London knew much about the peasantry of Shakspere's county until it was rumoured that they had begun to take some measures for endeavouring to obtain an addition to the wages on which they were starving. Some faint and imperfect protests

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they had uttered, of which little or no notice had been taken. The farmers said they could not afford to pay higher wages on account of the rents demanded by the holders of the land; the landowners maintained their right to follow out the rules of commerce with regard to other commodities, and to obtain all the rent that their land would bring them. Farmers seemed at all events to have enough to eat, and warm clothing, and most of the comforts, as well as many of the luxuries of life. Landowners had all the purchasable comforts and a majority of the luxuries and amusements of town and country. Hodge had almost forgotten the taste of real meat; bread and weak tea, a bit of hard cheese, a bowl of bad potatoes, and an occasional scrap of bacon, with intervals of porridge or water gruel, and not quite enough of any of these things; old and patched clothes, leaky boots; a cottage in which his family herded together in sleeping rooms such as a sporting nobleman would not have tolerated for horses or hounds-these were the circumstances of the field or farm labourer in many parts of the country.

In South Warwickshire the pinch was close, and hurt sorely, just at the time that a man returned to his native village after a visit to some friends in the manufacturing districts beyond. Such a journey made him an authority, and people were eager (if any mental attitude of theirs could be called eager) to hear an account of his travels.

Among the news with which the wanderer returned was that of the strikes among operatives, and the slowly stirring imagination of the suffering peasants was moved by what they heard. They could scarcely be worse off, and desperate as the attempt might be to combine in a demand for wages sufficient to keep them from actual starvation, they might hold out if they could get a little help from outside while they made their cause known. The principal organizer of the movement was Joseph Arch, a labourer who, by his character and natural ability, had been for some time regarded as a leader among them. He was somewhat better educated than most of his neighbours, and knew how to address them, for he had been accustomed

to preach to a Methodist congregation. He undertook to call a meeting, and on the appointed day a thousand men met under a great chestnut tree, and there, in plain, homely, but effective language, Arch addressed them. The thing was done: the union was formed there and then,and various branches were afterwards organized. The movement soon spread, and though the men had great difficulty in finding the means for support, they contrived to hold out. In Suffolk the labourers' strike became serious. The demand was for a shilling a week more wages. The farmers formed an association for the exclusion of union men from employment, and for opposing their claims; but aid came to the men on strike from miners' and artisans' unions, and even the Dorsetshire peasants contributed. Mr. Mundella, Lord Waveney, and Mr. Brand, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in vain endeavoured to effect a compromise. The men asked for fifteen shillings a week. The allowance from the strike committee was nine shillings.

In Lincolnshire Mr. Samuel Morley and Mr. Dixon were more successful, and the men returned to work, but in Suffolk 2000 men were locked out by the farmers, who refused to countenance the union, and the number greatly increased. A weekly organ of the strike was published, entitled the Labourers' Chronicle. The hay harvest had to be gathered by casual hands engaged with some difficulty. The labourers then organized a pilgrimage, and a large number of them started on a journey, accompanied by a waggon and team bearing a chest which was "the money-box." They appealed for contributions as they tramped to Newmarket, Cambridge, Bedford, Luton, Northampton, Wolverhampton, and as far as Halifax. The procession was a strange one, but the men were orderly, sober, and inoffensive. In some places they received money contributions, in others they were invited by leading inhabitants to substantial dinners; but the "pilgrimage" was on the whole not very successful. The funds of the union were rapidly diminishing, and at length the committee was obliged to declare that the allowances could not continue, but that the residue of the money would be applied to

assist emigration. The struggle had lasted for eighteen weeks, and the union had spent about £25,000, including the sums paid towards emigration. Out of 2400 men 870 returned to work, 400 migrated, 440 emigrated, 350 returned to work without leaving the union, 350 surrendered and left the union, and many remained unemployed.

The movement had, however, extended to various parts of the country, a new power had arisen against which some of the farmers continued to fight, while in some places the grounds of the demands put forward by the labourers were recognized, and efforts were made to improve their condition. At anyrate the agricultural labourer had vindicated his right to be regarded as an integer in the national estimate, and his claims could not thenceforth be ignored.

Sailors scarcely seemed very likely persons to join in a strike, but at some of the seaports there was a temporary combination among the merchant seamen for higher wages. There had, however, been stronger reasons than a desire for increased pay to account for the dissatisfaction of the seamen of the mercantile marine. The practice of sending out ships overladen and without a sufficient crew was one of them; the frequent neglect to provide adequate and wholesome rations was another; but worse, perhaps, than either of these was the crazy condition of some of the craft, in which a man who had entered for a voyage was compelled to fulfil his agreement under the penalty of imprisonment. Worse still, marine insurance was so easy that owners could secure themselves against the loss of any ship or cargo by paying a premium. It is certain that vessels, which could not be sent out without peril to the lives of all on board, frequently left port short-handed and overladen. It was darkly hinted that there were owners who calculated on probable loss, and habitually so over-insured as to make that loss more profitable than a safe return. Such suggestions, horrible as they may seem, were not very astonishing. Instances were broadly mentioned which seemed to give emphasis to the dreadful suspicion.

The subject was taken up by Mr. Samuel

MR. PLIMSOLL-DISRAELI LORD BEACONSFIELD.

Plimsoll, the member for Derby, a man of great sympathy and fervid temperament. Mr. Plimsoll published a book in which he brought some amazing accusations against individual shipowners, who appealed to the law and sued him for damages. He next brought a bill into parliament for the protection of the lives of seamen, proposing a strict inspection of all outgoing vessels, the adoption of a load line, and other restraints, which were opposed by the shipping interest in parliament as being harsh and impracticable, and by others as removing the responsibility from the owners and placing it on parliament. On a division the bill was rejected, but Mr. Disraeli's government promised to bring in another bill that should deal with the subject. In the next session (1875) a measure was brought forward of a much less stringent character than that of Mr. Plimsoll; but he was ready to accept it, in the hope that it might eventually be carried further, when, to his dismay, he found that it was to be delayed and then postponed to some uncertain date. Mr. Plimsoll suspected that the government had deluded him, and all his suppressed indignation against former delays and the shortcomings of the bill burst forth as he sprang to his feet, with words and gestures of hysterical vehemence denounced some of the shipowners, shook his fist in the face of ministers, waved his arms wildly, and declared that he would expose those villains who had sent brave men to death. The speaker interposed. The honourable member must not apply the word villains to members of that house. But the honourable member would not withdraw, and repeating the word vociferously rushed from the house. It was a painful scene, and with evident reluctance Mr. Disraeli moved that Mr. Plimsoll should be reprimanded by the speaker for his disorderly behaviour. Other members, among whom were Mr. A. M. Sullivan and Mr. Fawcett, interposed on behalf of the member for Derby, who was, as they said, obviously in a distressing condition of health and of mental disturbance, caused by his exertions and by the disappointment he had experienced. It was decided to postpone the decision of the house for a week till Mr. Plimsoll could be in his place. The impres

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sion was deep and general that the breach of etiquette or of manners was as nothing when compared with the apparent indifference of the government, and the exasperating delays and denials with which the effort to save men from being drowned at sea had been received. Mr. Plimsoll became for a time a national hero. Before the week was up he reappeared in parliament, where he tendered a frank and manly apology for his former violence, and begged the pardon of the house.

Mr. Disraeli had fully and readily withdrawn his motion for a reprimand, and the government, awakened to a sense of the feeling of the country by the utterances at public meetings, pushed forward a very inadequate measure for regulating the structure of merchant vessels, to be supplemented by subsequent legislation on the subject of marine insurance. That promised legislation did not appear, however, and Mr. Plimsoll continued his agitation, reiterated his demands, and even ran the risk of another threat of reprimand for his violence, before, in a new Liberal ministry, further advances were made, in providing for some kind of inspection of outward bound vessels, restriction of loading, and the regulation of insurance.

As Mr. Disraeli sat and listened to the wild tempestuous words, and saw the clenched hand and whirling arm of Mr. Plimsoll, he may have remembered the day, so many years before, when he had himself displayed scarcely less vehemence, and had declared that the time would come when the jeering cynical contemptuous house should hear him. By what an arduous, brilliant, and successful career-by what an exhausting expenditure of vital force he had made good those words! It may be taken for granted that he at least sympathized with Mr. Plimsoll in that moment of fierce assertion, for Disraeli was one of the first to appreciate and admire genuine emotion of that kind, as he would be one of the first generously to obliterate all records of its excesses. Sitting there, the foremost man in the realm, the head of a strong government, and revolving a policy of which he had hitherto only given some scintillating suggestions, he represented many

qualities which Englishmen held dear. The leaders in the parliamentary arena have often been compared to gladiators, and doubtless the heat and conflict of debate stirs up that fighting instinct which is mostly hidden and subdued, but sometimes glares out with lion eyes, and alarms its possessor even more than it startles his antagonist. If leading statesmen are to be spoken of metaphorically as gladiators, Disraeli was a veteran whose reputation had been made by many an eager contest. His onslaught was quick, his feints crafty and dangerous, his thrust often deadly. He advanced boldly, got away readily, was self-contained and imperturbable in defeat, in victory neither implacable nor ungenerous. He preserved no personal animosities. The combat over he could do full justice to his recent opponent-speak gracious words, if need were, and recall the skill with which some stroke was dealt. Can more be said in relation to the gladiatorial character?

He would be a strangely misled man who would say that Disraeli did not love England. The influences of race were strong in him, but they had joined with an influence as powerful. He was English plus Hebrew rather than Hebrew plus English after all, for his will and his devoted service were with the country of his birth. The characteristics of race were there, and asserted themselves, especially unsuiting him for playing that part of the squire in which he sometimes tried his skill, but they were subordinated to what he believed was for the honour and the welfare of the country to which he belonged. They were subordinated, that is, in many instances, but when the time came they reappeared in the policy which he first suggested and then avowed. The cast of his aspirations was oriental. The scene which he imagined as the triumph of his later years had something gorgeous in it. Calmer and more severely thoughtful minds felt that it was theatrical. To him no doubt it was the natural outcome of some systematic policy, the gradations of which he had never declared. To make the queen the acknowledged ruler of an empire as well as of a realm, to be the prime minister of a government that was

to hold a great, perhaps a paramount place, and to bear a personal part in representing its power and influence;--if that had been his dream it was no unworthy one, and in a measure it was to be realized. When Benjamin Disraeli sat in the front ministerial bench in the autumn of 1875, the reward of his unremitting labour in parliament was awaiting him; the crown of the peerage was to mark the step which led to the culmination of his extraordinary career. He already felt the effects of the long strife. It was not till some time afterwards, when the resignation of Lord Derby from the cabinet on the question of a demonstration by England against Russia, led to his speaking in graceful and pathetic language of his regret at losing the official support of one so trusted and admired, that he referred in a marked manner to the symptoms of failing physical powers which were among the reasons for his accepting a seat in the Upper House.

On the 22nd of August, 1876, Mr. Disraeli was elevated to the peerage with the title of Earl of Beaconsfield. In his farewell address to his constituents he wrote: "Throughout my public life I have aimed at two chief results. Not insensible to the principle of progress, I have endeavoured to reconcile change with that respect for tradition which is one of the main elements of our social strength, and in external affairs I have endeavoured to develop and strengthen our empire, believing that combination of achievement and responsibility elevates the character and condition of a people."

Before the date on which this title was conferred, "the Eastern question" was again stirring discussion. Once more the unspeakable Turk was agitating Europe, and the demands and ambitions of Russia were exciting deep suspicion in England.

In "Les Memoires sur la Chevaliere d'Eon" that man or woman who had once been famous as one of the first sword-players in Europe, and whose familiarity with almost every country and every court was attributed to the opportunities enjoyed in the capacity of a secret agent, there occurred a passage purporting to be an extract from the will of Peter the Great. It was as follows:-"Approach as near as pos

RUSSIA'S ALLEGED GRASPING POLICY.

sible to Constantinople and towards the Indies. He who reigns at Constantinople will be the real sovereign of the world, and with that object in view provoke continual wars with Turkey and with Persia: establish dockyards in the Black Sea; get possession of the shores of that sea as well as those of the Baltic, these two things being necessary for the ultimate success of our project; hasten the decay of Persia; penetrate as far as the Persian Gulf, re-establish the former trade of the Levant by appropriating Syria; and, if possible, extend the power of Russia to the Indies, which are the emporium of the world."

The first Napoleon published this alleged extract from the plan for compassing European supremacy left by the Czar Peter for his successors, and deposited in the archives of the Palace of Peterhoff. The whole matter was declared to have been an invention of the French emperor for his own purposes, and the existence of any such document was positively denied by the late Emperor Alexander. Whether it ever had any existence or not need not be discussed. Nothing could have been more ingeniously devised to express what has more than once appeared to some European politicians to be the practical aim of Russia. During the Franco-German war Russia had demanded that as some of the provisions of the treaty made after the Crimean war had been disregarded, the clause restraining her from maintaining armaments in the Black Sea should be expunged. There was a conference at Berlin, and the demand became a request to which the powers conceded. This "concession" turned out to be important, as Russia, no doubt, foresaw it might be. In 1875 she was already advancing into Central Asia by steady strides, and at the same time Turkey had declined into the condition from which she had previously suffered because of an evil and corrupt government. There came rumours of oppression and barbarous cruelties perpetrated against the people of the Danubian principalities. It soon became evident that the Emperor of Russia would claim the right to interpose for the protection of the Christian populations on the frontier, whatever might be his ultimate object. The British fleet in

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the Mediterranean was ordered to Besika Bay, not, as Mr. Disraeli afterwards declared, with the intention of menacing anybody, or to protect the Turkish Empire, but to protect the British Empire. At a conference of representatives of the powers held at Berlin, it had been proposed that there should be a suspension of hostilities between Turkey and the provinces for a month, during which a peace should be negotiated, and that if the negotiations failed the powers should agree to adopt further measures to secure peace and compel Turkey to observe her former promises.

Lord Derby was opposed to the proposed concerted action, which he believed was the outcome of a former secret agreement between Russia, Austria, and Germany. There was also a suspicion that Russia had fomented the insurrection in some of the provinces. The memorandum was not adopted, and public excitement was kept at a high pitch by intelligence that the Mussulmans at Salonica had risen against the Europeans and murdered the French and German consuls; that at Constantinople a revolutionary party had succeeded in deposing the sultan Abdul Aziz, who shortly afterwards had committed suicide by opening the veins in his arm with a pair of scissors; that his nephew Murad had been appointed his successor, and had promised to appoint a government to secure the liberties of all his subjects. In three months, however, he also was dethroned, and his brother Hamid reigned in his stead. Then came the news of the insurrection in Bulgaria, and of the horrible cruelties of the savage Bashi-Bazouks, who were sent to suppress it. The bodies of slaughtered women and children lay in heaps. Forty girls who had shut themselves in a house were burned to death; 12,000 persons had been killed in Philippopolis; at Batak above 1000 persons had taken refuge in the church, which resisted the attempts of the Bashi-Bazouks, who thereupon fired through the windows, climbed to the roof, and dropped burning faggots and lighted rags, which had been dipped in petroleum, amongst the refugees. Mr. Gladstone urged that the European powers should combine to settle the Eastern question. Mr. Disraeli explained that the

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