A great evil from which the labourer suffered was the restrictions thrown on him of settling in another parish.  If he desired to take his labour to a better market he often found it closed to him.  His marriage was discouraged,[473] because a single man did not want a cottage and a married one did.  To ease the rates there was open war against cottages, and many were pulled down.[474] If a labourer in a parish to which he did not legally belong signified his intention of marrying, he immediately had notice to quit the parish and retire to his own, unless he could procure a certificate that neither he nor his would be chargeable.  If he went to his own parish he came off very badly, for they didn’t want him, and cottages being scarce he probably had to put up with sharing one with one or more families.  Sensible men cried out for the total abolition of the poor laws, the worst effects of which were still to be felt.

Yet there was a considerable migration of labour at harvest time when additional hands were needed.  Labourers came from neighbouring counties, artisans left their workshops in the towns, Scots came to the Northern counties, Welshmen to the western, and Irishmen appeared in many parts; and they were as a rule supplied by a contractor.[475]

London was regarded as a source of great evil to the country by attracting the young and energetic thither.  It used, men said, to be no such easy matter to get there when a stage coach was four or five days creeping 100 miles and fares were high; but in 1770 a country fellow 100 miles from London jumped on a coach in the morning and for 8s. or 10s. got to town by night, ’and ten times the boasts are sounded in the ears of country fools by those who have seen London to induce them to quit their healthy clean fields for a region of dirt, stink, and noise.’  A prejudice might well have been entertained against the metropolis at this time, for it literally devoured the people of England, the deaths exceeding the births by 8,000 a year.  One of the causes that had hitherto kept people from London was the dread of the small-pox, but that was now said to be removed by inoculation.  Among the troubles farmers had to contend with were the audacious depredations caused by poachers, generally labourers, who swarmed in many villages.  They took the farmer’s horses out of his fields after they had done a hard day’s work and rode them all night to drive the game into their nets, blundering over the hedges, sometimes staking the horses, riding over standing corn, or anything that was cover for partridges, and when they had sold their ill-gotten game spent the money openly at the nearest alehouse.  Then they would go back and work for the farmers they had robbed, drunk, asleep, or idle the whole day.  The subscription packs of foxhounds were also a great nuisance, many of the followers being townsmen who bored through hedges and smashed the gates and stiles, conduct not unknown to-day.  In spite of these