“The Ayrshire Ploughman,” glorious Burns, tells us that the muse of his country found him, as Elijah did Elisha, at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over him. Grateful Caledonia sent her inspired child to an excise office! and in the discriminating patronage the wits of Grub Street found material for interminable sneers. Did the Southerns, however, reward the author of the “Farmer’s Boy,” and indicate their appreciation of the many fine passages that grace his “News from the Farm,” by a wiser or more generous patronage? The minister of the day (Lord Sidmouth, if we remember rightly) did bestow upon the poet some most paltry and ungenial office; but alas! poor Bloomfield died neglected in the straits of penury, and under the clouds of dejection. It had been better indeed, in every way, could it have been so arranged that the marvellous Robin should have been allowed to sing his lyrics
——“in glory and in joy,
Following his plough upon the mountain side,”
and that Bloomfield had been permitted to indite more “News from the Farm” amid the pleasant rural scenes that nursed his pastoral muse. But the patronage of genius has never been successful. Unusual peril seems the heritage of high gifts, and to minister rightly to such a man as Burns or Bloomfield is no easy task. It is not so with ordinary men, whose intellectual and imaginative powers harmonise with the common duties of their station, and raise no splendid incongruities to be subdued and regulated. But it is not with inspired ploughmen that our country gentlemen and tenant-farmers are called upon to deal, but with men of common clay—with the brawny peasants who till their fields and tend their herds, and whose toil has turned the sterile North into a garden of Ceres. Have our agricultural labourers been neglected—have their physical wellbeing and their moral and educational training been overlooked and left uncared for, while the classes above them and around them have had their comforts and privileges, moral and social, infinitely multiplied? This were indeed sad “news from the farm;” but although this were unhappily proved to be true, we are not then prepared to pronounce sweeping censure upon the parties apparently most nearly implicated in the degradation of our rural population. Many, very many, of the owners and occupants of the soil, we know, are deeply alive to the duties which they owe to the labouring poor who live under them, and discharge them to the best of their ability, although not, it may be, to the extent their benevolent wishes would desire. The question that may be raised on such a subject is not, Have our rural labourers been left stationary while the classes above them have all been elevated in their social condition? but rather, Are they worse off, and do they enjoy fewer advantages, than those in the same class of life—the industrious poor who inhabit our large cities and manufacturing towns and villages? Is the ploughman in his bothy unfurnished with table or chair, and the peasant in his “clay-built biggin,” damp and smoky though it be, more miserably accommodated with the comforts and conveniences of life than the haggard sons of toil, who are doomed to burrow in the murky lanes and blind alleys of our teeming seats of merchandise? Does the brawny arm and ruddy complexion of the ploughman bespeak deficient food or raiment, and manifest such dubious symptoms of health as the pinched countenance and pallid complexion of the attenuated artisans who live in “populous city pent?” Yes, responds promptly the inhabitant of the city; but that robust health is not due to the miserable bothy and the mud cabin, but to the pure air of the country, and the breezy gales of incense-breathing morn, and the healthful toil of the open field, which are the unchartered boons of a gracious Heaven, and in no respect the gifts of the lords of the soil. In the rejoinder of Mr Urbanus there is no doubt substantial truth; but that very rejoinder, perhaps, contains an explanation of the neglect pointed at. The robust health of the peasant has not admonished the country gentleman of duty neglected, and no emaciated frame and loopholed raggedness have appealed to his sympathies and rebuked his indifference. The opulent inhabitants of our cities have been addressed in a different strain, and the deadly typhus and the inscrutable plague of Asia have been the stern preachers to which they have been doomed to listen. If they have led the van in reformatory and sanitary measures for improving the social condition of the industrious poor, it is not very evident that their philanthropy has been quite spontaneous, or that it has been altogether uninfluenced by considerations suggested by a regard to their own personal safety and selfish interest. Those who may be disposed to range the country against the town, or curious to strike the balance of merit in the field of philanthropic enterprise betwixt our merchant princes and our country gentlemen, may prosecute such inquiries as have been indicated if they please; but for ourselves, we have no taste for such unprofitable investigation, and would rather lend a helping hand to a most interesting movement that has been lately originated towards improving the social condition of our agricultural labourers—a most loyal and peaceful race, forming, upon the whole, the best-conditioned part of the industrious classes of the kingdom.
Thanks to the Rev. Harry Stuart, of Oathlaw, if not for having originated the movement, for having at least given it a most unquestionable impetus, and for indicating the direction which it ought to take. We have read his Agricultural Labourers, &c., with remarkable interest and pleasure—a pleasure very different, and we believe much higher, than the most elaborate writing of the most brilliant pamphleteer could have given us. Mr Stuart, indeed, has nothing of the littérateur about him, and his style is the very reverse of artistic. He tells us that his appeal has been “got up in great haste,” but we scarcely think it could have been better had more time been devoted to its composition. It had been no improvement, in our estimation, had his Essay been tricked out in rhetorical embroidery, and been embellished with well-poised and finely-polished periods. We are quite sick of the flash and sparkle of the journalists, of their stilted eloquence and startling antithesis. The editor of every country newspaper writes nowadays as grandly as Macaulay, and apes to the very life “the long-resounding march and energy divine” of Burke and Bolingbroke. It is really a relief in these times to be spoken to in plain, natural, homespun English. When an honest gentleman has anything of importance to communicate, for ourselves we are very well pleased that he should use the vernacular, and address us in simple Anglo-Saxon. This is exactly what Mr Stuart has done. He writes from a full heart, and is manifestly so possessed with his theme that he has had no time to think of the belles-lettres and the art rhetorical. The minister of Oathlaw is peradventure no popular orator, and has never probably paraded himself on the platform, and his name is in all likelihood unknown to the sermon-fanciers of Edinburgh, but nevertheless he is quite a pastor to our taste. Living without pride amongst his people, going from house to house, knowing well the trials of every household, a patient listener to the homely annals of the poor, catechising the young, exhorting the unruly, helping the aged to trim their lamps and gird up their loins, we can understand how well and how quietly this worthy clergyman discharges the duties of the pastorate, reaping a nobler guerdon in the love of those amongst whom he lives and labours than ever the noisy trump of fame blew into ambition’s greedy ear. We rejoice to think that there are many such pastors in our country parishes, who, with their families, constitute sympathetic links of kindly communication betwixt the rich and the poor, and from whom, as from centres of civilisation, are shed on all around the gentle lights of literary refinement and Christian charity. These are the men who form the strength of our Established Church, and not her doctors and dignitaries; and, indeed, over our retired rural parishes it is evident that nothing but an endowed resident parochial clergy can permanently exert the beneficent influence of the pastoral office.
The origin of Mr Stuart’s address he states as follows: He became a member of the Forfarshire Agricultural Association upon the understanding, that the improvement of the social condition of the agricultural labourers was to be one of the objects to which the Association should direct its attention. Such seems to have been the intention of the society, or at least its committee were so ready to welcome the idea, that they forthwith asked Mr Stuart to address them upon the subject, and he did so accordingly. His auditors were so pleased, and, it may be, so instructed, that they requested the author to publish his address; and under the auspices of the Forfarshire Association it has been given to the world.
We have often thought that each of our counties has a distinct character of its own, and is distinguished by features peculiar to itself. While the Forfarshire coast has its populous towns, the seats of mercantile enterprise, and of thriving manufactures, the county has likewise been long eminent for its agriculture. By the symmetry and beauty of his Angusshire “doddies,” Hugh Watson of Keillor has made the county famous for its cattle. In Forfarshire, Henry Stephens practised the art which he has so admirably illustrated in his book. The son of a small farmer in this county, while a student at college, invented and elaborated, without aid or patronage, in a rude workshop, that reaper which American ambition has now so covered with fame. Forfarshire gentlemen, although non-resident, are not disposed to forget the claims of their native county, and by means of “the Angusshire Society” they annually distribute among its schools numerous prizes, thus countenancing the cause of education throughout the county, stimulating its ingenious youth to exertion, and animating its teachers in their honourable toil. And now the Forfarshire Agricultural Society, under the mild appeals of the Pastor of Oathlaw, have led the way in organising an association for raising the social condition of the agricultural labourers of the kingdom. So all hail to old Angus!—and may her proprietors, pastors, and tenant-farmers long be eminent in their spheres of duty, and cordially unite in the field of benevolent enterprise.
Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has been extensively read by landed proprietors and the better classes of our farmers. We wish it were universally so by these parties; and we wish, too, it were read and inwardly digested by the factors and agents to whom our large proprietors have committed the conduct of their business, and the care of their properties, and the welfare of those who cultivate them. It is impossible to read the speeches of the most interesting meeting held here on the 10th January last, and presided over by his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, without feeling that Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has literally proved “news from the farm” to very many of the owners and occupiers of the soil—the very parties who ought to know best the habits and discomforts of our agricultural labourers. It is very remarkable, indeed, that the Duke of Buccleuch seems accurately informed upon the subject; that he has personally inspected the dwellings of the agricultural labourers on his estate; and that he has personally issued instructions regarding the improvement of their cottages. Considering the territorial extent of his Grace’s estates, and the varied and momentous interests that claim and receive his Grace’s attention, his conduct and example, as well as his benevolent and patriotic words, will carry a severer reproof to those landowners who shall hereafter continue indifferent to the comfort and welfare of the labourers, than the most biting speech of the most pungent pamphleteer. Why, it may be asked, has Mr Stuart been left to make such a discovery? Why did the tenant-farmers, who are daily witnessing with their own eyes the discomforts of the agricultural labourers, who are most deeply interested in their physical and moral condition, and to whom Providence has more immediately committed the care of their interests—why did they not complain, and call for some amelioration of an evil so discreditable? But the fact is, that such men as Messrs Watson, Finnie, Cowie, and many others we might name, have never ceased to avail themselves of every opportunity of directing attention to the condition of our agricultural labourers, but they have heretofore, for the most part, addressed themselves to unprepared and reluctant audiences. Moreover, for many years our tenant-farmers have been struggling with such difficulties of their own, as have left them little time or inclination for devising expedients for improving the condition of their labourers. And it is likewise to be remembered that many of the farmers are themselves so little elevated above the peasantry in point of education and habits and domestic tastes, that it would be idle to expect that they should see any necessity for elevating the condition of the agricultural labourers.
This class of tenants must consider the present movement as fantastic, and absurd, and uncalled for, and they will prove, we fear, the greatest obstructives in the way of its success. So that if the truth is to be spoken, many proprietors would require first to improve the habits and elevate the character of their tenantry, before they attempt to elevate the social condition of their agricultural labourers. The nearer the tenant approaches the labourer in point of education and social habits, the more careless and indifferent is the former to the comforts of the latter, and the less inclined to ameliorate his condition. We think it by no means an impossible thing that there are not a few farmers throughout Scotland who are looking upon the present movement in behalf of our rural labourers not only as savouring of idle sentimentalism, but who are contemplating it with a jealous eye, as an attempt of the proprietors to place the condition of the servant upon the same platform with that of the master. There is, indeed, a class of small farmers, highly estimable and worthy, and quite fit, in respect of capital, for their position, who cultivate their possessions by means of their own families, aided by perhaps one or two servant-lads. In these cases the servants live truly as members of the family, and are treated as such; and this is the farm-service which, above all others, virtuous and thoughtful parents desire for their children.
The tenant-farmers are, probably, likewise prepared to rebut any charge of indifference brought against them, by stating that they have found so great difficulty in getting proper house-accommodation for their own families, and suitable and enlarged farm-buildings to enable them satisfactorily to carry on the business of the farm, and to meet the requirements of an improved husbandry, that the idea of asking a better style of cottages for their labourers would have been Utopian. The farmer, too, has but a temporary interest in the land, and but a temporary connection with the agricultural labourers upon his farm; and with more immediate wants and difficulties of his own to contend with, to suppose that he should expostulate with a reluctant proprietor, and set himself devotedly to improve and remodel the houses of his labourers, is to expect from him an extent of philanthropic enthusiasm quite uncommon, and, therefore, quite unreasonable. The landowner occupies a very different position—but, however inexplicable it may seem, he has not hitherto had his attention directed to the cottages of the labouring poor upon his estate. This confession of previous ignorance was ingenuously made by the speakers at the Edinburgh meeting, and we believe that they did not misrepresent the information upon the subject that had hitherto generally prevailed among the landed proprietors of Scotland. Lord Kinnaird, at a meeting of the “Dundee Model Lodging-House Association,” on 13th January, expressed himself as follows: “Until he had read that pamphlet (Mr Stuart’s), he had had no right idea of the bothies on his estate. Thinking such a matter was an arrangement purely between the farmer and his labourers, he had not visited them till lately; but having now done so, he felt they were a reproach to him, and must be improved.” And yet Lord Kinnaird resides for the most part upon his estate—he takes an anxious and most kindly interest in the moral, educational, and physical wellbeing of the people who live upon it,—and having such an acknowledgment from a nobleman so benevolent and active, the irresistible inference is, that other proprietors in his position are not only ignorant of the bothies, but of the condition of the cottages upon their properties.