ioned step has had the
precisely opposite effect to what was wished. The labourer with higher
wages feels the demand upon his pocket but very little more. The cost of
living in rural outlying districts has risen only to a very trifling
degree--barely perceptibly, in fact. Bread is cheap--that is the
staple--rents are the same, and there are more allotments than ever,
making vegetables more easy to obtain. The result, therefore, is this,
that the girl feels she can sin with comparative immunity. She is almost
sure to get her order (very few such appeals are refused); let this be
supplemented with some aid from the parish, and she is none the worse
off than before, for there is no prejudice against employing her in the
fields. Should her fall take place with some young farmer's son from
whom she may get a larger contribution in private, or by order of the
magistrates, she is really and truly in a pecuniary sense better off
than she was before, for she has a certain fixed income. The evil is
aggravated by the new law, which enables the order to be extended over a
longer term of years than formerly, so that for fifteen years is a
common thing. If it is decided to recognise immorality, and to provide
against the woman being unduly injured by it, then these orders are
certainly the correct procedure; but if it is desired to suppress it,
then they are a total failure. The girl who has had an illegitimate
child is thought very little the worse of by her friends and her own
class, especially if her seducer is a man who can afford to pay for
it--that is the grand point. If she is fool enough to yield to a man who
is badly off, she may be jeered at as a fool, but rarely reprimanded as
a sinner, not even by her own mother. Such things are not looked upon by
the rural poor as sins, but as accidents of their condition.

It is easy to be hard upon the poor girls, but consider their training.
Many of them cannot read or write; how many even can sew well? The
cottage girl is always a poor hand at her needle, and has to be taught
by the elder servants when she first goes into her place. Accustomed
from childhood to what would be considered abominable indecency in a
higher class of life; constantly hearing phrases which it is impossible
to allude to; running wild about the lanes and fields with stalwart
young men coarser and ruder than those at home; seeing other girls none
the worse off, and commiserated with rather than condemned, what w