tion. The farmer pays the
poor-rate which supports the labourer in disease, accident, and old age;
the highway rates on which the millionaire's carriage rolls; and very
soon the turnpike trusts will fall in, and the farmers--_i.e._, the
land--will have to support the imperial roads also. With all these heavy
burdens on his back, having to compete against the world, he has yet no
right to compensation for his invested capital if he is ordered to quit.
Without some equalisation of local taxation--as I have shown, the local
taxes often make another rent almost--without a recognised tenant-right,
not revolutionary, but for unexhausted improvements, better security, so
that he can freely invest capital, the farmer cannot--I reiterate it, he
cannot--do more than he has done for the labourer. He would then employ
more skilled labour, and wages would be better. And, after all that he
does for them, he dares not find fault, or he may find his ricks blazing
away--thanks to the teaching of the agitators that the farmers are
tyrants, and, by inference, that to injure them is meritorious. There is
a poster in Swindon now offering L20 reward for the discovery of the
person who maliciously set fire to a rick of hay in Lord Bolingbroke's
park at Lydiard.

If any farmers are hard upon their men, it is those who have themselves
been labourers and have risen to be employers of labour. These very
often thoroughly understand the art of getting the value of a man's wage
out of him. I deliberately affirm that the true farmers, one and all,
are in favour of that maxim of a well-known and respected agriculturist
of our county--"A fair day's wage for a fair day's work."

I fear the farmers of Wiltshire would be only too happy to ride
thorough-breds to the hunt, and see their daughters driving phaetons, as
they are accused of doing; but I also fear that very, very few enjoy
that privilege. Most farmers, it is true, do keep some kind of vehicle;
it is necessary when their great distance from a town is considered, and
the keep of a horse or two comes to nothing on a large farm. It is
customary for them to drive their wives or daughters once a week on
market-days into the nearest town. If here and there an energetic man
succeeds in making money, and is able to send his son to a university,
all honour to him. I hope the farmers will send their sons to
universities; the spread of education in their class will be of as much
advantage to the community