ry will sometimes get L20 besides her board
(liberal) and sundry perquisites. These often save money, marry
bailiffs, and help their husbands to start a farm.

In the education provided for children Wiltshire compares favourably
with other counties. Long before the passing of the recent Act in
reference to education the clergy had established schools in almost
every parish, and their exertions have enabled the greater number of
places to come up to the standard required by the Act, without the
assistance of a School Board. The great difficulty is the distance
children have to walk to school, from the sparseness of population and
the number of outlying hamlets. This difficulty is felt equally by the
farmers, who, in the majority of cases, find themselves situated far
from a good school. In only one place has anything like a cry for
education arisen, and that is on the extreme northern edge of the
county. The Vice-Chairman of the Swindon Chamber of Agriculture recently
stated that only one-half of the entire population of Inglesham could
read and write. It subsequently appeared that the parish of Inglesham
was very sparsely populated, and that a variety of circumstances had
prevented vigorous efforts being made. The children, however, could
attend schools in adjoining parishes, not farther than two miles, a
distance which they frequently walk in other parts of the country.

Those who are so ready to cast every blame upon the farmer, and to
represent him as eating up the earnings of his men and enriching himself
with their ill-paid labour, should remember that farming, as a rule, is
carried on with a large amount of borrowed capital. In these days, when
L6 an acre has been expended in growing roots for sheep, when the
slightest derangement of calculation in the price of wool, meat, or
corn, or the loss of a crop, seriously interferes with a fair return for
capital invested, the farmer has to sail extremely close to the wind,
and only a little more would find his canvas shaking. It was only
recently that the cashier of the principal bank of an agricultural
county, after an unprosperous year, declared that such another season
would make almost every farmer insolvent. Under these circumstances it
is really to be wondered at that they have done as much as they have for
the labourer in the last few years, finding him with better cottages,
better wages, better education, and affording him better opportunities
of rising in the s