The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-02 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENINGLNOVEMBER :2, 1855.

lenient terms tendered for his acceptance at
Vienna. The work so well begun should be
fairly followed up. The legitimate fruits should
be fully realised. The occupation of Kinbourn
may be a great feather in our caps. But we
want a more substantial acquisition—something
that will bring solid rewards, as well as laurels
and decorations. If nothing more be achieved it
will be but "a left-handed " triumph, that
might just as well have been left alone,
inasmuch as its chief effect will be to open the
eyes of the Russians to the nature and extent of
the impending danger, and direct their attention
to the necessity of making adequate preparations
for the inevitable struggle. " The blot" so dis-
tinctly pointed out, if not at once covered, will be
rendered far more difficult to hit. We have
seen, by the protracted siege of Sebastopol, the
mischief of giving time to an enemy so energetic
to repair their previous errors, and we may rest
assured that if breathing time be given to TODLE-
BEN he will prepare " a nut by no means easy to
crack," even with all our forces.
Besides, the sources of supply for the Crimea
will still remain intact. The channels of commu-
nication being open may possibly enable the enemy
to retain possession of a portion of the Crimea,
and to maintain some remnant of their quondam
prestige.

It is certainly late in the season for such im-
portant
operations ; but even in the time much
may still be accomplished. In place of months
we have only weeks in which to work. But
we know what even a few hours, pro-
perly disposed. of, may effe3t, and we
may, therefore, reasonably hope that there will
be no further procrastination, that the curse of
being " too late," which has so long attended all
our operations by land or by water, may no
longer impair our most brilliant perform-
ances, and that the portals of Nicolaieff
and Kherson being thrown open, the en•
trance in our own hands, the road may be
followed up to the extent of our most sanguine
anticipations—so that henceforward there may be
as little to fear from Nicolaieff as there now is
from Sebastopol— once " the standing menace of
Constantinople and of Europe."

If the War should not end in the emancipation
of Poland, it has begun the emancipation of our
peasants. We learn from Mr. PACKE that the
labourers of Devonshire are showing rather an-
noying symptoms of independence. "If a master
says a word to a man he demands his wages and
forthwith seeks a new place, leaving the master
in a disagreeable position." The disagreeable po-
sition being that the master finds the serf-market
changed into a free-labour market, through the
competition of the recruiting serjeant. The change
is indeed a great one ; two years ago, in the same
part of England, the case was just reversed—if
the man said a word to the master he was dis-
missed, and well if his wages went with him, to
find himself in the "disagreeable position " of re-
jection for impertinence by all the farmers of the
village ; and with no alternative but the work-
house, until he was supposed to be sufficiently
subdued. " The young active man, however,
who would have become a labourer or a mechanic,
is now hurried oft(he should have said, he hurries
off) to the Seat of War." Hence the lament that
" the farmer has lost the control over the mea
which he formerly had."
The remedy seems not to have occurred to Mr .
PACK; and the hundred gentlemen and farmers
who sat down to the " substantial dinner at the
Globe Hotel, Newton." In some cases no doubt
the roving or excitable temperament of youth
may have been .the reason why the serjeant's
bounty and drill were preferred to the farmer's
"control" and wages ; the grand reason, however,
in most cases, might have been suggested by the
"substantial dinner "on which the speaker and
the audience had previously feasted. The lads
well knew that from the day they commenced as
soldiers they too would have substantial dinners,
and songs, if not speeches, after them.
We should like to know the rations obtained by
proper demeanour under farmers' control. How often
in the week did the Devonshire lads feed on any-
thing beyond bread and cheese ? How often did
the smallest slice of bacon flavour the huge family
dish of potatoes? How much, after the substan-
tials of bread and potatoes, was left for condi-
ments—such, say, as the Duke of NORFOLK'S
curry powder 1 How much more to pay for rent or
lodging, four in a bed and eight in a room?
How much for fire, candle and soap, shoes and
clothing? The answers to these questions, we
fancy, explain the majority of cases in which the
stalwart half-fed lad of twenty exchanged the
blessings of Arcadian control for those of military
duty.
The truth is that farm wages have been de-
plorably low. The screw has been turned from
above till the unhappy labourer has been com-
pletely squeezed ; and so long has this been dcne
that it was supposed all independence had been
squeezed out of him for a generation or more.
The vitality of independence iu human nature
seems quite to have surprised the magistrates and
yeomen. They gaze on it with the wonder of
the philosopher, when, at the presence of mois-
ture, he sees the dried up animalcula resume a
vigorous life. What hopes does the fact suggest
of what the result might be were the nations
now crushed by Russian, Austrian, and other
despots enabled to develope the undying principle of
our nature ? To return, however, to our peasants.
The multiplicity of farmers' sons bidding for
farms, with the consolidation of small farms into
large ones, enabled the landlords to screw the
farmers. These, in turn, screwed the labourers.
The additional profit thus gained, or rather ex-
torted, served the landlord's purpose again
to give the screw another twist ; the farmers,
of necessity, did their part again ; till what
between superabundance of farmers, and still
greater superabundance of labourers, the latter
have been gradually squeezed till animal existence
was compressible no further. We have our-
selves heard a farmer in a large market town
telling another farmer that his labourers wanted
eleven shillings a week !—it was with pre-
sent prices,—and denying with oaths that they
hshaorrdtlytcimreeditagito, bmuuteDlielvoowneshrirtehwana
should ever got it of him. Our town readers may
awt r
ae
nbdu
wet a
geths
doubt whether they reach it even now.
It is plain, then, that these commiserated mas-
ters have the
Bank of England raises
the rate of interest when
it would keep its gold from • going abroad ; the
farmer must raise the rate of wages if he would
keep at home those who fill his coffers. Control
also will return easily enough to those
who pay
their labourers what would nake it worth while to
bear control. As a general rule, men do not
lightly throw up situations when they cannot
better themselves ; and the farmer, who, deter-
mined to have men worth paying well, would not
long be in want of them. The farmers, after
two such harvests, and such prices, both for
flour and meat, will not easily grumble us into
the belief that they cannot afford to bettor the
condition of their labourers. Before the War
emigration was in some places mulcting the sub- i

lords of the soil of their long-enjoyed control, and

removing before their eyes the very best of their
labourers ; yet it never seemed to occur to them
that these elite of their subjects might pay for
wages which they would prefer to emigration.
Hence arose the complaint that Canada and the
States deprived them of all but the old and the
worthless. Strong as the rustic's love of home
is, it is plain where the fault lies, when he
flees across the broad Atlantic.
Mr. PACKE is an educationist. He praises the
old system of agricultural apprenticeship, and
asks for some general plan to educate the children
of agricultural labourers. We have heard in days
gone by too much of the evils of rural apprentice-
ship, when the apprentice, male or female, was
little better than a slave, and the master or mis-
tress than a tyrant, to wish for a renewal of the
system. With the humane and judicious it would
often work well. But more than parental autho-
rity, unmitigated by parental tenderness, is too
strong a temptation to many cruel abuses. Mr.
PACKE laments that the early age at which agri-
cultural children are required to work inter-
feres with their education to an extent, which
almost sentences them to perpetual ignorance.
This is surely the fault of the landlords. They
are omnipotent in Parliament in respect to rural
legislation. Let the barbarous game laws, the
income tax, and the probate duties, and twenty
things beside, witness to that. Why not then
generalise the law which they forced on manufac-
turers ? Why not compel the farmers to let the
children go to school till thirteen ? Mr. PACKE
himself seems now strongly to feel that the agri-
I culturists need a more enlightened peasantry. He
r lis right ; but if he be, let him put agricultural
1 children on a legal level with those of manufac-
turing districts. We have often wondered that,
' when the landlords were passing the laws for re-
' fstricting the hours of manufacturing labour, and
compelling attendance at school, the manufac-
turers (lid not consent on the condition that the
principle of the law was made universal. It could
, !not have been pretended that the most ignorant
portion of the population did not need measures
of compulsory education.