Gentlemen, in my opinion, the farmers of England cannot, as a body, afford to pay higher wages than they do, and those who will answer me by saying that they must find their ability by the reduction of rents are, I think, involving themselves with economic laws which may prove too difficult for them to cope with.  The profits of a fanner are very moderate.  The interest upon capital invested in land is the smallest that any property furnishes.  The farmer will have his profits and the investor in land will have his interest, even though they may be obtained at the cost of changing the mode of the cultivation of the country.  Gentlemen, I should deeply regret to see the tillage of this country reduced, and a recurrence to pasture take place.  I should regret it principally on account of the agricultural laborers themselves.  Their new friends call them Hodge, and describe them as a stolid race.  I must say that, from my experience of them, they are sufficiently shrewd and open to reason.  I would say to them with confidence, as the great Athenian said to the Spartan who rudely assailed him:  “Strike, but hear me.”

First, a change in the cultivation of the soil of this country would be very injurious to the laboring class; and second, I am of opinion that that class instead of being stationary has made if not as much progress as the manufacturing class, very considerable progress during the last forty years.  Many persons write and speak about the agricultural laborer with not so perfect a knowledge of his condition as is desirable.  They treat him always as a human being who in every part of the country finds himself in an identical condition.  Now, on the contrary, there is no class of laborers in which there is greater variety of condition than that of the agricultural laborers.  It changes from north to south, from east to west, and from county to county.  It changes even in the same county, where there is an alteration of soil and of configuration.  The hind in Northumberland is in a very different condition from the famous Dorsetshire laborer; the tiller of the soil in Lincolnshire is different from his fellow-agriculturalist in Sussex.  What the effect of manufactures is upon the agricultural districts in their neighborhood it would be presumption in me to dwell upon; your own experience must tell you whether the agricultural laborer in North Lancashire, for example, has had no rise in wages and no diminution in toil.  Take the case of the Dorsetshire laborer—­the whole of the agricultural laborers on the southwestern coast of England for a very long period worked only half the time of the laborers in other parts of England, and received only half the wages.  In the experience of many, I dare say, who are here present, even thirty years ago a Dorsetshire laborer never worked after three o’clock in the day; and why?  Because the whole of that part of England was demoralized by smuggling.  No one worked after three o’clock