he had not been sure that it was here where the shoe pinched. For, though wages may be half as much again in Lincolnshire as they are in Dorset, what, after all, is 15s. a week to support a family of five or six persons? And this is the case of many a young married man. Deduct 1s. 6d. or 2s. for rent, and you have about a couple of shillings for the weekly food and clothing of each individual,—just one-sixth of the amount usually allowed a servant for board wages, and which may therefore be considered the sum judged necessary for one person's maintenance per week.
Better a thousand times for the labouring man was that old Hebrew legislation which forbade the agriculturist to muzzle the ox which trod out the corn, than a so-called Christian civilisation which, while pretending to treat the Bible with reverence, really sets aside the great bulk of its teachings with contempt, and prefers to take the rules and regulations of its social life from political economy; whose laws it professes to believe are so immutable, yet so salutary, that it can look down on its workers, half starved in the midst of plenty, with the same kind of pity that it regards the victims of a flood or an earthquake.
Certain it is that the question of mere existence must be uppermost in these fen-men's minds, or they could not possibly have forgotten some far worse evils of their social condition. I refer to the wretched slavery into which scientific improvement and material progress has brought their wives and children. For not i a word did these representative fen-men say at either meeting concerning the infamous gang system.
It looks ominous, and, taken in connection with the singular reticence which I have found in getting information on the subject, I am inclined to think that a certain blindness has come upon the inhabitants of the district with regard to its wickedness.
The labouring men may dislike any interference with their supposed rights as fathers to sell their children into slavery; the farmers and the landowners may deprecate any interference with the labour market which would lessen their profits; but if England recognises its responsibility to God as a nation, it must believe that He will not be satisfied with the plea of ignorance, or the plea of the exigencies of trade, or even with the plea of parental rights. The righteous Ruler of the universe will undoubtedly
