I'll tell you what
it's come to, my men--that we can't afford no more landlords. We can't
afford 'em, and that's the truth of it!"
The crowd growled a dubious assent.
"Oh, yes, you can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them
first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an
old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt
politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans
of it. Look you here. The farmers, they say they can't live unless they can
make four rents, one for labour, and one for stock, and one for rent, and
one for themselves; ain't that about right? Very well; just now they can't
make four rents--in course they can't. Now, who's to suffer for that?--the
farmer as works, or the labourer as works, or the landlord as does nothing?
But he takes care on himself. He won't give up his rent--not he. Perhaps
he might give back ten per cent, and what's that?--two shillings an acre,
maybe. What's that, if corn falls two pound a load, and more? Then the
farmer gets a stinting; and he can't stint hisself, he's bad enough off
already; he's forty shillings out o' pocket on every load of wheat--that's
eight shillings, maybe, on every acre of his land on a four-course
shift--and where's the eight shillings to come from, for the landlord's
only given him back two on it? He can't stint hisself, he daren't stint
his stock, and so he stints the labourers; and so it's you as pays the
landlord's rent--you, my boys, out o' your flesh and bones, you do--and you
can't afford it any longer, by the look of you--so just tell 'em so!"
This advice seemed to me as sadly unpractical as the rest.
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