Practically, therefore, the four points of the real Cottage Charter have been attained, or as nearly as is possible.  Why, then, is it that dissatisfaction is still expressed?  The reply is, because a new programme has been introduced to the labourer from without.  It originated in no labourer’s mind, it is not the outcome of a genuine feeling widespread among the masses, nor is it the heartbroken call for deliverance issuing from the lips of the poet-leader of a downtrodden people.  It is totally foreign to the cottage proper—­something new, strange, and as yet scarcely understood in its full meaning by those who nominally support it.

The points of the new Cottage Charter are—­(1) The confiscation of large estates; (2) the subdivision of land; (3) the abolition of the laws of settlement of land; (4) the administration of the land by the authorities of State; (5) the confiscation of glebe lands for division and distribution; (6) the abolition of Church tithes; (7) extension of the county franchise; (8) education gratis, free of fees, or payment of any kind; (9) high wages, winter and summer alike, irrespective of season, prosperity, or adversity.  No. 6 is thrown in chiefly for the purpose of an appearance of identity of interest between the labourer and the tenant against the Church.  Of late it has rather been the cue of the leaders of the agitation to promote, or seem to promote, a coalition between the labourer and the dissatisfied tenant, thereby giving the movement a more colourable pretence in the eyes of the public.  Few tenants, however dissatisfied, have been deceived by the shallow device.

This programme emanated from no carter or shepherd, ploughman or fogger.  It was not thought out under the hedge when the June roses decked the bushes; nor painfully written down on the deal table in the cottage while the winter rain pattered against the window, and, coming down the wide chimney, hissed upon the embers.  It was brought to the cottage door from a distance; it has been iterated and reiterated till at last some begin to think they really do want all these things.  But with the majority even now the propaganda falls flat.  They do not enter into the spirit of it.  No. 9 they do understand; that appeals direct, and men may be excused if, with a view which as yet extends so short a space around, they have not grasped the fact that wages cannot by any artificial combination whatever be kept at a high level.  The idea of high wages brings a mass of labourers together; they vote for what they are instructed to vote, and are thus nominally pledged to the other eight points of the new charter Such a conception as the confiscation and subdivision of estates never occurred to the genuine labourers.