in the cultivation of the land and call into action that surplus labour, without which its latent fertility cannot be fully developed.
The English labourer.
But, though the state of the Irish peasant has been more forced upon public attention, the condition of the agricultural labourer in England is very far from satisfactory. The agricultural returns afford no guide to its consideration. He is now the only class of the community who has no representative. The Irish peasant has, directly in many cases, by his vote as a small farmer, and indirectly through his church, which (connected neither with the landlord nor the state) brings aggregate feeling of the people to bear upon their Parliamentary representatives. By one means or another they do make themselves heard in Parliament. But so little is known of the English agricultural labourer, that when his actual condition is set forth in the report of a Royal Commission, the public are struck with astonishment, and even the landowners are surprised to find a state of things at their doors which many of them little suspected. The condition of the labourers' dwellings is in some counties deplorable. It is not my province, however, on this occasion to enter further on that subject. I attempted to introduce a clause in last Census Act, in 1860, which would have thrown much light on the state of our cottage accommodation, but it was rejected in the English Bill. It was adopted, however, in the Scotch census, and has shown that one-third of the population of Scotland lived, eachbfamily, in houses of one room only, another third in houses of two rooms; two-thirds of the whole of the people being thus found to be lodged in a manner incompatible with comfort and decency as now understood. The same returns in the next census will show progress that has been made in the 10 years; and the public advantage of this will, I trust, lead to the adoption of a similar system in the next English census.
In the same year I moved for returns of the wages of agricultural labourers in England and Wales, which was subsequently followed for Scotland and Ireland. Upon these returns Mr. Purdy read to this Society an able and interesting paper in 1861. These form very important branches of the statistics of agriculture, and though it is not necessary that they should be included in the annual returns, I trust their importance will not be overlooked in the preparation of the next Census Act.
Great Change in proportion of the People Dependent on Agriculture.
It has been found in Ireland, and is the case to a less extent in some parts of England, that it is not so much the low rate of wages
