The Bee-Hive. — 1872-08-10 (London, England)

THE PEOPLE'S PAPER.  ESTABLISHED 1861.  Rig/el and Duty are like two palm trees,—unless they grow together 'hot bear no fruit.  poor "agitators," who are pleading the labourers' claims, as he did the other day at the annual dinner of the Gloucestershire Agricultural Society. According to the Blsnor, Gloucestershire is a perfect Paradise for the agricultural labourers, and their contentment is great in consequence, "principally because the labourers know that whatever equitable demands are made by the labourers, if made respectfully, the employers are thoroughly ready to respond to the application." The other day only the farmers raised the wages of the labourers because they found money was sinking in value. The farmer came forward and said, "If you have to pay more for your meat," (and it was not often he was afraid the labourers could got meat), "it is right I should pay more for these brawny arms and hands that till my fields." The scene, as imagined, is rather touching. The generous farmer, with beaming countenance and outstretched hands, who is determined that if ho profits by the dearness of his meat, his worker shall not be deprived of his fair share in consequence. The grateful labourer, with tears of gratitude welling from his eyes, blessing, with broken voice, his friend and benefactor. What could be more touching than this if the BISHOP, by his illplaced parenthesis, had not taken the meaning out of it—" It is not often, I am afraid, the labourers could get meat." Of course the Bisnor knows very well, if any reliance whatever is to be placed on the reports of Royal Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners, that they seldom touch meat. The truth will out, even from a Bishop sometimes, though only in a quiet little parenthesis. These parenthetical words arc few, but how tremendous the meaning. They mean a population Of millions spread over our fields, which they till, as the BISHOP figuratively puts it, "with their brawny arms and hands," but who are, by the lowness of their miserable wages, prevented from obtaining the nourishment which every other class of the community must have to keep them in health and life, and which has to be given in liberal quantity to our prisoners and paupers, that their multiplied deaths may not lay those who are in authority over them open to charges of murder.  CHARLES JOIIN ELLICOTT, you know this, and you wink at it, You hold your crosier before your holy eyes that you may not see it; but seen or unseen, there are no bowels of compassion for the suffering labourers under your episcopal apron, or you could not have emptied the vials of your wrath at the Glou. oester dinner on the heads of the poor " agita. tators," who, though without "an acre" themselves, dare to question the right of farmers and landlords to work and starve to death the poor people from whose labour they derive their wealth and splendour, and through whose obedience to law they live securely in the midst of an abundance they abuse.  But the Bishop of GLorcEsnu and BRISTOL knows more than this, He knows that Church and Parliament, Bishops, Lords, and Commons have, up to the present moment, left these millions in 'brutal ignorance, and he kUOWS also that what they are about to receive as education they Are getting by the efforts of "agitators," and not throtigh the requirements. of religion enforced by the Bishops nor through the claims of humanity urged by landlords and farmers. Nay, CHARLES Jour?' Brajort hag a_kniywiedge which go eS eyen