What chance has such a gentleman in bargaining with the cottagers?  How should he know the village value of a cabbage?  How should he understand the farmyard value of a fowl?  It may possibly strike him as odd that vegetables should be so dear when, as he rides about, he sees whole fields green with them.  He sees plenty of fowls, and geese, and turkeys, gobbling and cackling about the farmyards, and can perhaps after awhile faintly perceive that they are the perquisites of the ladies of the tenants’ households, who drive him a very hard bargain.  He, too, has cast aside suits, shoes, hats, and so forth, really but little worn, to give away to the poor.  If married, his family require some help from the cottage women; and there are odd jobs, well paid for, on the place for the men.  Thus the cottagers are glad of the arrival of their new masters, the one in the summer, the other in the winter months.

The ‘chapel-folk’ of the place have so increased in numbers and affluence that they have erected a large and commodious building in the village.  Besides the cottagers, many farmers go to the chapel, driving in from the ends of the parish.  It is a curious circumstance that many of the largest dealers in agricultural produce, such as cheese, bacon, and corn, and the owners of the busiest wharves where coal and timber, slate, and similar materials are stored, belong to the Dissenting community.  There are some agricultural districts where this class of business is quite absorbed by Dissenters—­almost as much as money-changing and banking business is said to be the exclusive property of Jews in some Continental countries.  Such dealers are often substantial and, for the country, even wealthy men.  Then there are the Dissenting tradesmen of the market town.  All these together form a species of guild.  The large chapel in the village was built by their united subscriptions.  They support each other in a marked manner in times of difficulty, so that it is rare for a tenant-farmer of the persuasion to lose his position unless by wilful misconduct.  This mutual support is so very marked as to be quite a characteristic fact.

The cottagers and their families go to chapel with these masters.  But sometimes the cottager, as he approaches the chapel door, finds upon it (as in the church porch) a small printed notice affixed there by the overseers.  If the labourer is now recognised as a person whose opinion is to be consulted, on the other hand he finds that he is not without responsibilities.  The rate-collector knocks at the cottage door as well as at the farmer’s.  By gradual degrees village rates are becoming a serious burden, and though their chief incidence may be upon the landlord and the tenant, indirectly they begin to come home to the labourer.  The school rate is voluntary, but it is none the less a rate; the cemetery, the ancient churchyard being no more available, has had to be paid for, and, as usual, probably cost twice what was anticipated.  The highways, the sanitary authority, not to speak of poor relief, all demand a share.  Each in itself may be only a straw, but accumulated straws in time fill a waggon.