The Express.
London, England, 1858-10-06 00:00:00

SPORTING INTRLLIO ENCR.

A SPECIAL EDITION of the "REPRESS,"
osiataining the results of the day's Races, is pub-
lished every evening during the Sporting Ssailon, at
six o'clock.

HARVIIAT•IIOXES and Agricultural Association
Meetings now constitute a marked feature of our
English autumns. The townspeople all over the
land who witness these festivals ate saying the
same thing—that, among all the changes in our
restless century, none is mon manifest than that of
the spirit, discourse, and transactions of our ruts!
15 Li • .v, 1,4 . ;gat ft cod, it.
tvr t • et' brsCon of Jona.* home. 'rho ciusgs
really .s very great. „Norfolk practices an, we
observe, much referred to at recent meetings
on account of the agricultural pre-eminence
of that county. Let Norfolk, then, be em-
pared with itself at the two ends of halta-century.
What were farmers' meetings hke, and what were
the Harvest-homes fifty years ago ? Some citizens
still living may remember what it was to hear a
qaainteornbinationofyellandshriek breakingthestill-
nese of some thrice August evening, when they were
taking their stroll through the lanes, or beside the
stubbles, or, worse still, when they were sitting at
home, in town or village, or even in old Norwich
itself. The harvest-men were hallooing for
largess;" and everybody went any distance
round to avoid the di...orderly troop. Bedizened
with ribbons, bristling with wheat or barley sum
their faces red, their voices cracked, their eyes
rolling, their pit tipsy, these fellows joined hands
in a code, in the street or on the common, and
yelled for " largesse." And largess they got, for
nobody dared refuse. Plenty of silver was showered
on them by citic. n shopkeepirs who were already
ruinously taxed on behalf of the agricultural
interest ; but little or none of the money ever
reached home. It went in public houses,
or through the brisk fingers of those who know how
to make a profit of a drunken man. The labourer
returned to his hovel and potatoes, or his extra-
vagant slice of dry bread,—then the dearest and
most comfortless of poor man's dinners. Before
going home, however, some might draw others into
the frolic of breaking threshing-machines, or riotously
waiting on certain farmers, to extort concessions or
to threaten vengeance if they should take newly
enclosed land, or try machinery, or engage mowers
or reapers from • distance next year. Tree farmers
were helpless at such times. If they resisted dicta-
tion, the vine which adorned the south gable was
stripped in the night of every bunch, horses' manes
and tails were Cu', turnip-fields were pillaged, sheep
were stolen, implements were broken, and every-
thing wasyielded to save the stacks from being
fired. There most be many persons who remember
such autumns when the Corn Laws were in full
operation. At the Agricultural Meetings the farmers
either insisted that everything was right be-
cause they were growing rich, or made adversity
their plea for protecting Protection. They would
stand by the landed interest to the last drop of their
blood. They were paying wages out of the rates, in
those times, and the mass of rural society wee melting
down into pauperism; the shopkeepers did not love
the fanners, nor the town the country. The gaols
were crowded with poachers, and the workhouses
with a fine peasantry: and still at the market-table
the farmers, with no fear of their labourer, at the
moment b. fore their eyes, toasted" Farmer Gwent,"
and prais d the war and the Minister of the day, and
cricked jokes over their tankard.. at scholars and
dreamers who offered to teach them their owe trade—
at chemists and machinists who would show them
how to improve their land, and get more out of it.
Now the scene is somewhat different, as Lord
ALREVARLE'4 neighbours bear witness. Iu various
parts of Norfolk there have been assemblages of
labourers this autumn, adjourned from the church to
the park, the common, or the village green,
to enjoy a bountiful dinner, an afternoon
of sports, and tea and a dance io the evening;
none of the wives hungering at home, and dreading
the return of the tipsy husband; none of the
children wallowing about the lanes, and doomed'
to shiver in cord and hunger when winter came on.
Wires, children and all, keep Harvest-home in the
modern way. The higher order of meetings are no
less altered. Norfoik was one of the first counties
in the race of agri.:ultural improvement ; but there
was plenty of bigotry, and laziness, and rural eta.
wit in districts which lay beyond the range of the
Rolkham haft:genic ; and the Corn Laws were no-
where more devoutly worshipped than in some parts
of Norfolk. We need not expatiate on what the
scirrace and art of agriculture are now, in the rankest
old Tory regions of that very self-complacent county.
It would amine the agricultural imagination of the
old Lord Liu-a-tea himself, if his ghost could
now walk the lands he himself reclaimed from
the sea, and visit the great population—(amounting
to hundreds of thousands before his death)—which
has been created by the creation of a fertile
territory for them to live on. If he could witness
the stock-yards, the implement-shows, the treatment
of the soil at bottom and top, the amount of work
done by machinery, and the demand for human
hands to do more than ever of that which human
hands are required for, be would almost fancy that
the Niii!enciim of .Vgriculture had arrived.
And it. cut be in other agricultural

MIIIMIN