It is not often that village affairs are made the subject of discussion
in newspapers, for the power of the press has not yet reached remote
country places. But we do hear occasionally of whole villages being
pulled down and razed, in order to prevent them "becoming nests of
beggars' brats." A member of Parliament did not hesitate to confess
before a Parliamentary Committee, that he "had pulled down between
twenty-six and thirty cottages, which, had they been left standing,
would have been inhabited by young married couples." And what becomes of
the dispossessed? They crowd together in the cottages which are left
standing, if their owners will allow it; or they crowd into the
workhouses; or, more generally, they crowd into the towns, where there
is at least some hope of employment for themselves and their children.
Our manufacturing towns are not at all what they ought to be; not
sufficiently pure, wholesome, or well-regulated. But the rural labourers
regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the
rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of
manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks
volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their
country's pride."
The intellectual condition of the country labourers seems to be on a par
with their physical state.
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