in the day, for a very good reason—­because he had to work at night.  No farmer allowed his team to be employed after three o’clock, because he reserved his horses to take his illicit cargo at night and carry it rapidly into the interior.  Therefore, as the men were employed and remunerated otherwise, they got into a habit of half work and half play so far as the land was concerned, and when smuggling was abolished—­and it has only been abolished for thirty years—­ these imperfect habits of labor continued, and do even now continue to a great extent.  That is the origin of the condition of the agricultural laborer in the southwestern part of England.

But now gentlemen, I want to test the condition of the agricultural laborer generally; and I will take a part of England with which I am familiar, and can speak as to the accuracy of the facts—­I mean the group described as the south-midland counties.  The conditions of labor there are the same, or pretty nearly the same, throughout.  The group may be described as a strictly agricultural community, and they embrace a population of probably a million and a half.  Now, I have no hesitation in saying that the improvement in their lot during the last forty years has been progressive and is remarkable.  I attribute it to three causes.  In the first place, the rise in their money wages is no less than fifteen per cent.  The second great cause of their improvement is the almost total disappearance of excessive and exhausting toil, from the general introduction of machinery.  I don’t know whether I could get a couple of men who could or, if they could, would thresh a load of wheat in my neighborhood.  The third great cause which has improved their condition is the very general, not to say universal, institution of allotment grounds.  Now, gentlemen, when I find that this has been the course of affairs in our very considerable and strictly agricultural portion of the country, where there have been no exceptional circumstances, like smuggling, to degrade and demoralize the race, I cannot resist the conviction that the condition of the agricultural laborers, instead of being stationary, as we are constantly told by those not acquainted with them, has been one of progressive improvement, and that in those counties—­and they are many—­where the stimulating influence of a manufacturing neighborhood acts upon the land, the general conclusion at which I arrive is that the agricultural laborer has had his share in the advance of national prosperity.  Gentlemen, I am not here to maintain that there is nothing to be done to increase the well-being of the working classes of this country, generally speaking.  There is not a single class in the country which is not susceptible of improvement; and that makes the life and animation of our society.  But in all we do we must remember, as my noble friend told them at Liverpool, that much depends upon the working classes themselves; and what I know of the