fact that at the next general election that class of the community known as the agricultural labourer will be the only operating class which will be excluded from voting. I should much like, at a proper time and place, to enlarge on this point, for, in the practical view I take of the matter, I fail to discover any reason why operatives living in boroughs should be admitted to the franchise, while operatives living in the country should be excluded. I will now content myself by saying, that I recognise in the uneducated, dependent, and scattered condition of the latter the real reason why the country has tacitly allowed—as if by common consent—a distinction to be made between the wage-paid labourer of the factory and the wage-paid labourer of the farm.[1] This distinction cannot have arisen because the premises occupied by the one are more valuable than those occupied by the other, for it would be difficult to say which labourer's dwelling—the rural or the urban—costs more money to provide, and it has often been shown in this room that the actual money rent paid by the farm labourer is no criterion of the value of the premises he occupies; nor can it be, because the
- ↑ In a letter to the writer, the kind and able advocate of the labourer, the Rev. Prebendary Brereton, of Little Massingham, Norfolk (late of Devonshire), says: "I am glad that you propose to republish your paper. It will be very useful in dispelling the unreasonable and mischievous notions that prevail as to be state of the English agricultural labourer. I could have wished that you had noticed with more emphasis the wrong that is done him by omitting him from the enfranchisement bestowed on his brother operatives. Next to the truths of religion, rights of citizenship are, I believe, the most powerful educators of mankind, and as a stimulus to energy of thought they are even needed in a rural than in an urban population." Mr. Clare Sewell Read, M.P., takes a different view, and said at the Society of Arts when this paper was read: "Mr. Denton seemed to think it rather strange that agricultural labourers were not admitted to the franchise; but they must remember that while the borough qualification had been reduced only from 10l. to about 4l., that for counties had been reduced from 50l. to 12l.; and if the present bill was spoken of as a leap in the dark, he considered that one which would give the franchise to the agricultural labourer would be taking a jump into the bottomless pit." For my own part I shall be pleased when the labourer of the farm is placed in every respect on the same footing of citizenship as the labourer of the factory.
