ses had
combined, to spread a very bitter feeling abroad amongst the
agricultural poor. First among these stood the new poor law, the
provisions of which were vigorously carried out in most
districts. The poor had as yet felt the harshness only of the new
system. Then the land was in many places in the hands of men on
their last legs, the old sporting farmers, who had begun business
as young men while the great war was going on, had made their
money hand over hand for a few years out of the war prices, and
had tried to go on living with greyhounds and yeomanry
uniforms--"horse to ride and weapon to wear"--through the hard
years which had followed. These were bad masters every way,
unthrifty, profligate, needy, and narrow-minded. The younger men
who were supplanting them were introducing machinery, threshing
machines and winnowing machines, to take the little bread which a
poor man was still able to earn out of the mouths of his wife and
children--so at least the poor thought and muttered to one
another; and the mutterings broke out every now and then in the
long nights of the winter months in blazing ricks and broken
machines. Game preserving was on the increase. Australia and
America had not yet become familiar words in every English
village, and the labour market was everywhere overstocked; and,
last but not least, the corn laws were still in force, and the
bitter and exasperating strife in which they went out was at its
height. And while Swing and his myrmidons were abroad in the
counties, and could scarcely be kept down by yeomanry and poor
law guardians, the great towns were in almost worse case. Here
too emigration had not set in to thin the labour market; wages
were falling, and prices rising; the corn law struggle was better
understood and far keener than in the country; and Chartism was
gaining force every day, and rising into a huge threatening
giant, waiting to put forth his strength, and eager for the
occasion which seemed at hand.

You generation of young Englishmen, who were too young then to be
troubled with such matters, and have grown into manhood since,
you little know--may you never know!--what it is to be living the
citizens of a divided and distracted nation. For the time that
danger is past. In a happy home and so far as man can judge, in
time, and only just in time, came the repeal of the corn laws,
and the great cause of strife and the sense of injustice passed
away out of men's minds. The na