“Can’t they read? Can’t they practice light and interesting handicrafts at home, as the German peasantry do?”
“Who’ll teach ’em, sir? From the plough-tail to the reaping-hook, and back again, is all they know. Besides, sir, they are not like us Cornish; they are a stupid pig-headed generation at the best, these south countrymen. They’re grown-up babies who want the parson and the squire to be leading them, and preaching to them, and spurring them on, and coaxing them up, every moment. And as for scholarship, sir, a boy leaves school at nine or ten to follow the horses; and between that time and his wedding-day he forgets every word he ever learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as thorough a heathen savage at heart as those wild Indians in the Brazils used to be.”
“And then we call them civilized Englishmen!” said Lancelot. “We can see that your Indian is a savage, because he wears skins and feathers; but your Irish cotter or your English laborer, because he happens to wear a coat and trousers, is to be considered a civilized man.”
“It’s the way of the world, sir,” said Tregarva, “judging carnal judgment, according to the sight of its own eyes; always looking at the outsides of things and men, sir, and never much deeper. But as for reading, sir, it’s all very well for me, who have been a keeper and dawdled about like a gentleman with a gun over my arm; but did you ever do a good day’s farm-work in your life? If you had, man or boy, you wouldn’t have been game for much reading when you got home; you’d do just what these poor fellows do—tumble into bed at eight o’clock, hardly waiting to take your clothes off, knowing that you must turn up again at five o’clock the next morning to get a breakfast of bread, and, perhaps, a dab of the squire’s dripping, and then back to work again; and so on, day after day, sir, week after week, year after year, without a hope or chance of being anything but what you are, and only too thankful if you can get work to break your back, and catch the rheumatism over.”
“But do you mean to say that their labor is so severe and incessant?”
“It’s only God’s blessing if it is incessant, sir, for if it stops, they starve, or go to the house to be worse fed than the thieves in gaol. And as for its being severe, there’s many a boy, as their mothers will tell you, comes home night after night, too tired to eat their suppers, and tumble, fasting, to bed in the same foul shirt which they’ve been working in all the day, never changing their rag of calico from week’s end to week’s end, or washing the skin that’s under it once in seven years.”
“No wonder,” said Lancelot, “that such a life of drudgery makes them brutal and reckless.”
“No wonder, indeed, sir: they’ve no time to think; they’re born to be machines, and machines they must be; and I think, sir,” he added bitterly, “it’s God’s mercy that they daren’t think. It’s God’s mercy that they don’t feel. Men that write books and talk at elections call this a free country, and say that the poorest and meanest has a free opening to rise and become prime minister, if he can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is, that in practice he can’t; for one who gets into a gentleman’s family, or into a little shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty know that they’ve no chance before them, but day-laborer born, day-laborer live, from hand to mouth, scraping and pinching to get not meat and beer even, but bread and potatoes; and then, at the end of it all, for a worthy reward, half-a-crown-a-week of parish pay—or the work-house. That’s a lively hopeful prospect for a Christian man!” ...
Into the booth they turned; and as soon as Lancelot’s eyes were accustomed to the reeking atmosphere, he saw seated at two long temporary tables of board, fifty or sixty of “My brethren,” as clergymen call them in their sermons, wrangling, stupid, beery, with sodden eyes and drooping lips—interspersed with more girls and brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in their caps, whose sole business seemed to be to cast jealous looks at each other, and defend themselves from the coarse overtures of their swains.
Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished at the foulness of language which prevailed; and the utter absence of anything like chivalrous respect, almost of common decency, towards women. But lo! the language of the elder women was quite as disgusting as that of the men, if not worse. He whispered a remark on the point to Tregarva, who shook his head.