Now with a three-pound cottage, having a parlor, kitchen, bed-room and buttery on the lower floor, and an equal number of apartments on the upper; with a forty-rod garden to grow his vegetables, and with a free school for his children at easy walking distance, the agricultural laborer in England will be placed as far forward on the road of improvement as the Government or people, or both, can set him.  The rest of the way upward and onward he must make by his own industry, virtue and economy.  From this point he must work out his own progress and elevation.  No Government, nor any benevolent association, nor general nor private benevolence, can regulate the rate of his wages.  The labor market will determine that, just as the Corn Exchange does the price of wheat.  But there is one thing he can do to raise himself in civil stature, moral growth, and domestic comfort.  He may empty the Jug into the Basket.  He and his family may consume in solids what they now do in frothy fluids.  They may exchange their scanty dinner of cold bacon and bread for one of roast beef and plum pudding, by substituting cold coffee, cocoa or pure water for strong beer.  Or, if they are content to go on with their old fare of food, they may save the money they expended in ale for the rent of one or two acres of land, for a cow, or for two or three pigs, or deposit it weekly in the Post-Office Savings’ Bank, until it shall amount to a sum sufficient to enable them to set up a little independent business of their own.

Here, then, are three great steps indispensable for the elevation of the agricultural laborers of Great Britain to the highest level in society which they can reach and maintain.  Two of these the Government, or the land-owners, or both, must take.  They are Improved Dwellings and Free and Accessible Education.  These the laborer cannot provide for himself and family.  It is utterly beyond his ability to do it.  The third, last, long step must depend entirely upon himself; though he may be helped on by sympathy, suggestion, and encouragement from those who know how hard a thing it is for the fixed appetites to break through the meshes of habit.  He must make drink the cheapest of human necessities.  He must exchange Beer for Bread, for clothes, for books, or for things that give permanent comfort and enjoyment.  When these three steps are accomplished, the British laborer will stand before his country in the best position it can give him.  And I believe it will be a position which will make him contented and happy, and be satisfactory to all classes of the people.

After all that can be done for them, the wages of the agricultural laborers of Great Britain cannot be expected to exceed, on an average, twelve shillings a week, or about half the price of the same labor in America.  Their rent and clothes cost them, perhaps, less than half the sum paid by our farm hands for the same items of expenditure.  Their food must also cost only about half of what our men pay,