The Bee-Hive. — 1873-03-15 (London, England)

THE -AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' MOVEMENT.  _ TIE 17: upward movement of the agricultural labourers has reached Faringdon to the intense annoyance of squires, parsons, and farmers. Perhaps nowhere was it more needed. Certainly if field-workers have fared worse elsewhere than in this West Berlcs district, the welder of wonders is that instead of a peaceful revolution, such as is now going on, there has not been a more or less bloody one 'initiated.  One way hit upon by the masters for the suppression of the movement was the inatint discharge of unionists from their employ. But this has, of course, proved a losing game. As fast as men have been turned away from their ten or eleven shillings a week places, we have  =ent them off northwards to receive double that amount. So other means are devised of keeping the poor fellows down. The last is an attempt to suppress their village-meetings Of course these have to be out of doors. They are too poor to hire rooms. So our landlord J. P.'s have searched their law books to see if there is not some way of preventing these gatherings, and as it seems easy for prosecutors to find what they want in the way of legal sanction, they have of course succeeded. And on Tuesday seven honest labourers were arraigned at the bar of justice here for the high crime and misdemeanour of meeting together at the village of Littleworth to discuss their grievances! . .  The pretended Offen-oe was an imaginary obstruction of the highway, about the most preposterous nonsense that ever was written upon a parchment summons. The sideway where the meeting was held has been used for out-door services for many years, and a meeting held upon it would be about as much of an obstruction to anyone passing by as the assembling of a few hundreds in front of the Royal Exchange would be to persons passing along Cornhill. But those wondrous instruments of oppression, our local enactments, were all-sufficient for Tuesday's purposes, and although a Leamington solicitor came up to defend the poor fellows, they were all condemned of course, and on their refusal to pay a fine shut up like thieves and murderers in our gaol. On the advice of their solicitor the money was ultimately paid, and the men were able to go home to their wives and families instead of being sent off to pick oakum in Reading Gaol. And yet, sir, we are living, they say, in the nineteenth century ! And on every hand we hear glowing eulogies on our glorious institutions! Our is the land of liberty! What other country enjoys such laws? Who would not be a Briton? God help us ! Unless the mighty army of the workers, sinking their various differences, unite in one supreme effort to purge our statute books of their oppressive enactments, and drive every aristocratic J. P. from the justice seat, no leader of the people will venture to be much longer answerable for their peaceable behavionr. Among the hundreds of stout fellows who thronged the avenues of our court on Tuesday there were mutterings not loud but deep of a very significant character. Had their seven fellow-workmen been taken off handcuffed to Reading, the singular patience of their natures would doubtless have given way, and then! well, we cannot say what. One thing only we know, no other rural magistrate would ever again have signed a summons for the committal to prison of a man for standing on a village green to hear a brother labourer discourse on the best means of promoting each other's welfare.  _ In conclusion, I would beg earnestly for your utmost assistance in this great rural awakening. A RTIIMI CLAXDrs.