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I entered the dwelling of a poor peasant in the parish of Newton Poppleton, (between Topsham and Sidmouth,) for the purpose of investigating an alleged case of "comparative comfort." At the village inn I had fallen into conversation with two farmers, one of whom, in reply to my loudly expressed regret at the misery of the labourers in that district, informed me that that misery was exaggerated. "For instance," said he, "one of my men receives 7s. a week, and has a house rent free." For the moment I conceded the fact as a creditable exception to the general rule; but, on the departure of farmer Thomas, determined to visit the happy family, and, accompanied by a guide, proceeded on my errand. I found the mother and her five little ones at home. One of them was ill, and it was evident that none of them were overfed. They had not tasted meat for months. The weekly consumption of coarse bread was eight four-pound loaves, at sevenpence halfpenny the loaf, purchased from the baker at a cost of five shillings,-five-sevenths of the week's wages! Potatoes, and soap, and salt consumed the remaining pittance.

For fuel the children prowl, like gypsies, along the lanes and through the woods, gathering a few rotten sticks, or the mother proceeds to the nearest waste for her burthen of turf. Not the least provision against casual sickness or premature infirmity can ever be made out of the peasant's earnings.

This account was published in the Somerset County Gazette. The editor expressed great surprise that such a state of things prevailed in Devonshire, and congratulated the peasantry of Somerset on their independence. A committee however, was appointed to make a similar inquiry into their condition. In reference to it the editor says:

"At the Board of Guardians on Wednesday, however, we received painful evidence that the agricultural labourers of Somerset are, if it be possible, worse off than those of Devonshire. One case will be sufficient.

"A woman applied for relief in consequence of the ill health of herself and children, and the certificate of the medical officer stated her to be suffering from want of sufficient nourishment. She bore two children in her arms, one of them having inflamed eyes. The case was strictly examined, and with a view to information on the real state of our boasted peasantry—the happy children of the soil-the pride of our land, as they are called by poets and landlords, we put several questions, the answers to which filled us with surprise. The following is the substance of her statement.

"Her husband is a farm labourer, working for a farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Taunton. His wages are seven shillings a week only, with an allowance of cider for himself. We ascertained that these were the wages generally

given by the farmers in this vicinity. The family consists of the peasant, his wife, and five children under ten years old. The farmer sells them wheat, not the best, but still, she said, very good, at eight shillings a bushel. She bought half a bushel a week, which consumed four shillings out of the seven. She paid eighteen pence a week for house rent; it cost her sixpence a week for grinding, baking and barm, to make the wheat into bread; another sixpence was consumed in firing, and only a solitary sixpence was left to provide the family with the luxury of potatoes, clothes, and other necessaries, for comforts they had none. And this is the condition of the English labourer."

These, and similar accounts of the peasantry in every part of England, were published more than two years ago. Since then the state of things has been growing worse and worse every day. The price of food has greatly increased. Commercial embarrassment has carried a distress hitherto unknown through every part of the country; and the most undoubted authorities, Quarterly Reviews, Members of Parliament, London and Provincial Journals, have all confirmed the sad truth, that although the peasantry have been surrounded by overflowing granaries, yet "those who till the earth and make it lovely and fruitful by their labours, are only allowed the slave's share of the many blessings they produce."

A powerful writer in the Westminster Review,

in alluding to the insensibility of the upper and middle classes to the distress of the lower orders, remarks: "They have so long been habituated to the knowledge of the existence of misery, want and privation, that they ask with indolent or vapid indifference when pressed upon to consider the whole question—' what is there new that we have not yet heard of? Is there any thing particular to which you refer ? Tell them that an agricultural labourer who toils twelve, and sometimes fourteen hours per day, in cold, rain, frost, sun, fog, alternately frozen, bleached, and drenched, earns for his week's labour, for the support of himself and his wife, and four young children, none of them able to leave the hut in which they reside, without their mother accompanying them; the wretched pittance of twelve shillings (which is nearly or quite double the average sum,) and they will ask, 'Oh! that has been the price for a long time past—is that all ?'

"No, it is not all; for these men shall hear further how these twelve shillings are expended; and when they look on their own purple and fine linen, their own tables groaning under the luxuries piled on them, and see their own eyes stand out with fatness, let the bill of fare, of their fellow man, the labourer, stare them in the face:

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"No butter-no milk-no meat-no red herrings even no clothing-no medicine for the children-no shoes or boots-no provision put by for the times when the husband may be unable to work from sickness or accident; and yet the twelve shillings are gone! yes, gone! And in what? In insufficient food for the body! We visited lately fifty such cases. There are 500,000 more to be looked to, and 500,000 more beyond them. So here is a population, and in England too, and in some of our best districts, existing on bread and potatoes, with no meat, beer, or milk, from year's end to year's end, but two ounces of tea and a pound of moist sugar for husband, wife and four children, for a whole week! and this normal state is viewed with a sort of complacency by those who inquire 'is there any thing new?' Yes, it is new in the history of the world, that an enlightened, industrious, indefatigable peasantry, should exist on such fare, and should brook such a state of being."

The same writer declares, that "the constant,

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