Men puzzled their brains to discover who this Swing could be and whence this rage among the poor of the country districts.  Of the great motive power, Want, Oppression, only a single person here and there thought, and certainly no one in the agricultural districts.  Since that year the incendiarisms have been repeated every winter, with each recurring unemployed season of the agricultural labourers.  In the winter of 1843-44, they were once more extraordinarily frequent.  There lies before me a series of numbers of the Northern Star of that time, each one of which contains a report of several incendiarisms, stating in each case its authority.  The numbers wanting in the following list I have not at hand; but they, too, doubtless contain a number of cases.  Moreover, such a sheet cannot possibly ascertain all the cases which occur.  November 25th, 1843, two cases; several earlier ones are discussed.  December 16th, in Bedfordshire, general excitement for a fortnight past in consequence of frequent incendiarisms, of which several take place every night.  Two great farmhouses burnt down within the last few days; in Cambridgeshire four great farmhouses, Hertfordshire one, and besides these, fifteen other incendiarisms in different districts.  December 30th, in Norfolk one, Suffolk two, Essex two, Cheshire one, Lancashire one, Derby, Lincoln, and the South twelve.  January 6th, 1844, in all ten.  January 13th, seven.  January 20th, four incendiarisms.  From this time forward, three or four incendiarisms per week are reported, and not as formerly until the spring only, but far into July and August.  And that crimes of this sort are expected to increase in the approaching hard season of 1844- 45, the English papers already indicate.

What do my readers think of such a state of things in the quiet, idyllic country districts of England?  Is this social war, or is it not?  Is it a natural state of things which can last?  Yet here the landlords and farmers are as dull and stupefied, as blind to everything which does not directly put money into their pockets, as the manufacturers and the bourgeoisie in general in the manufacturing districts.  If the latter promise their employees salvation through the repeal of the Corn Laws, the landlords and a great part of the farmers promise theirs Heaven upon earth from the maintenance of the same laws.  But in neither case do the property-holders succeed in winning the workers to the support of their pet hobby.  Like the operatives, the agricultural labourers are thoroughly indifferent to the repeal or non-repeal of the Corn Laws.  Yet the question is an important one for both.  That is to say—­by the repeal of the Corn Laws, free competition, the present social economy is carried to its extreme point; all further development within the present order comes to an end, and the only possible step farther is a radical transformation of the social order. {268} For the agricultural labourers the question has,