The English Peasant. Richard Ford Heath
with cannon.
In 1872 the South Warwickshire labourers formed a Trades-Union, and though the example soon spread through the country, thus showing itself to be a far more formidable movement than the Dorset one, not a hand was raised to stop its progress.
Few movements have been less the result of premeditation. Some labourers at Weston asked for an increase of wages; one or two of the Wellesbourne men noticed the fact in a local paper, and, talking about it to a labourer who had been in the Black country, he suggested that the Wellesbourne people should combine for the same end. They were willing, but wanted a leader. They knew a man at Barford who they thought would do: he was a day labourer, but his soul was lifted above the clods. To Barford they accordingly went. The good wife was at the cottage door. "We want," said they, "to talk to Joe about forming a Union; other trades have a Union, and we don't see why we should not have one."
"You form a Union!" she replied; "why, you ain't got spirit to form a Union."
"Yes, we have," they replied; "only Arch must lead us."
"Very well," she answered, "you must tell him so yourselves, and he will do it."
They did as she said, and Arch threw himself heart and soul into the work. The first thing done was to hold a meeting at Wellesbourne. From farm to farm, by word of mouth, the tidings spread, and on the 14th day of February 1872, beneath a noble chestnut, which adorns the village green, the agricultural labourers of England shook off the fetters of ages. A thousand persons or more were present, and adhesions poured in so fast to the new Union then formed that the Secretary could hardly write the names. Notices were served on the farmers asking a rise of wages to sixteen shillings a week; the demand was refused, and the labourers struck.
But their faith and courage were not severely tried, for the agricultural labourers throughout the country took up the move ment, until the Agricultural Labourers' Union became a National organisation. The labourer had boldly marched into the social citadel; he was henceforth a citizen de facto, and to-morrow will be so de jure.
What had given the labourer courage to claim his rights? I will answer that question by the following narrative:—
It was a cold winter's day, and the snow lay on the ground hard and crisp, when an old man might have been seen trudging, staff in hand, to his "appointment" at a village in the depths of the country. Ben was a working bricklayer by trade, but he had a higher calling, namely that of a minister of Jesus Christ. The temple in which he was to preach had been an old cow-house. It was lighted by a few candles fastened in tin slides and stuck against the walls, and by a huge fire, around which a number of children were warming themselves. When he arrived the people were singing, so, joining in the hymn, he got into the wooden box which served as a pulpit. He could neither read nor write, but his knowledge of the Scriptures was so extensive that he always had a verse appropriate to the occasion. This knowledge he owed to his wife, who taught him to recite whole chapters. Janet was just dead, and this was the first time he had preached since his loss. He took for his text 2 Tim. ii. 7, 8. The sermon over, the children flocked round "dear old Ben," and an aged man, stretching out his trembling hand to him, cried: "The Lord be praised for what we have heard to-night!" The old man invited him to have a "dish of tea" before he went home, and the preacher left the little meeting-house amid many a fervent "God bless you" from the poor people who had heard him.
"I kept the kettle boiling," the good wife said to Ben, as he entered the humble dwelling of his host. "I know'd you'd be coming. So Janet's gone, aye—hoo's better off now, Ben." "Bless the Lord! hoo is," said Ben; "but it's wearying without her. Hoo says, a bit afore hoo died, 'Ben,' hoo says, 'thee'l not be long after me;' and then hoo says, 'Ben, Ben,' hoo says, 'tell us about Jacob's lather;' so I told her; and then hoo says, 'Ben, Ben,' hoo says, 'the lather's coming down, Ben,' and then hoo died. Five and thirty years hoo'd been my wife, and it's lonesome like now to be without her, for I'm an old man, ye sees, and my work's nearly done, bless the Lord! I've tried to serve Him more years than I served the devil—forty years this very night since I first know'd Him, and He's been very good to me ever since." His pent-up feelings overcame him, and the old man stopped to give them way. It was a solemn scene, those two poor old creatures out of their poverty ministering to the bodily and spiritual comfort of "dear old Ben." The dish of tea was drunk; and then, kneeling on the cold bare floor, Ben prayed. It was the last prayer he offered up in the presence of others, for three hours later he was found, with his head resting on a stone by the roadside, dead; a smile had overspread his features, and his face was turned upward as though he too had seen the ladder coming out of heaven, and the angels descending to beckon him away.
Many respectable people would have called old Ben a "ranter." I should call him a primitive Christian, for though I do not believe the poor in Judæa had fallen at any time so low as the English poor have done, some of the apostles were not in a much more exalted station than old Ben. Poor and ignorant as he was, it was men like he who woke in the dull, sad minds of his fellow-sufferers a new hope, a belief that there was indeed a Kingdom of Heaven worth struggling to obtain. The very ignorance and poverty of the labourers cut them off from knowing anything of the Gospel, even in its narrow English form. They were too ignorant to understand anyone who did not speak their language and think their thoughts, too poor to support any kind of ministry.
In the source from whence the foregoing narrative has been taken will be found, through a long course of years, the obituaries of Christian apostles, some of whom laboured all the week for a wage of a few shillings, and then on Sunday walked twenty or thirty miles to preach the Gospel. One such, having six children, for weeks ate nothing but bread, although he had five miles to walk daily to a barn where he was employed as a thresher. "Yet," we are told, "he sometimes so felt the presence of God that he seemed to have strength enough to cut the straw through with his flail." Believing literally in our Lord's promises, he realised their fulfilment, and in moments of dire necessity received help apparently as miraculous as that given Elijah. Nobody, of course, will believe this who supposes that there is no other kingdom but that of Nature. However, these things are realized by the Poor who have the least faith, "for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."
These were the kind of men who prophesied in "the valley of the dry bones;" but, of course. Resurrection is no agreeable task to unhealthy souls. Like the sickly sleeper, who has passed a night full of horrible dreams, and has just fallen into a heavy slumber before dawn, the benighted villagers cursed the heralds of the coming day and bid them begone. They pelted them with mud, stones, and rotten eggs; sometimes threw ropes over them to drag them to the river; often sought to drown their praying and preaching with fire-shovels and tin kettles. In these persecutions they were sometimes led on by the authorities; and constables wishing to ingratiate themselves with the upper classes laid information against these poor preachers as disturbers of the peace. On such a charge John Ride and Edward Bishop were cited before the magistrates of Winchester, in 1834. No breach of the law being proved against them, the magistrates offered to let them go if they would promise not to preach again at Micheldever. Refusing to do this, they were bound over to be tried at the Quarter Sessions, and during the twelve days they were finding bail, they were kept in the same prison in which the victims of 1830 had been confined. I do not suppose that they had any idea of the dignity of their martyrdom, or how really they were being associated with the sufferings of Christ. For we must not expect the thoughts of even the poorest among English evangelists to rise above the level of nineteenth-century Christianity. However, no one can preach the Gospel of the Kingdom or sincerely pray that that Kingdom may come without helping to bring about a revolution of the most radical description.
But if the religious awakening brought about by the instrumentality of such men gave the labourers energy enough to claim their rights, the public mind had itself been prepared to admit their demand by an awakening far more widespread and discernible.
A great earthquake had taken place; an angel had descended from heaven, and rolling back the stone, sat upon it. Yes, we in England saw only the pale aurora of that Resurrection-morn, and little believed its import. We fancied ourselves a peculiar people, to whom a European Sunrise was only a matter of curiosity. But who that remembers the literature and the movements of 1848 but must feel, even if he thinks only of England, that he lived in a true springtime,