But the agricultural labourers remained inarticulate,
unnoticed, unrepresented. A Tory orator, said--and many of his class
agreed with him, though they were too prudent to say it--that the
labourer was no fitter for the vote than the beasts he tended. But
there were others who knew the labourers by personal contact, and
by friendly intercourse had been able to penetrate their necessary
reserve; and we (for I was one of these) knew that our friends in
the furrow and the cow-shed were at least as capable of forming
a solid judgment as their brethren in the tailor's shop and the
printing-works. There was nothing of the new Radicalism in this--it
was as old as English history. The toilers on the land had always
been aspiring towards freedom, though social pressure made them
wisely dumb. Cobbett and Cartwright, and all the old reformers
who kept the lamp of Freedom alive in the dark days of Pitt and
Liverpool and Wellington, bore witness to the "deep sighing" of
the agricultural poor, and noted with indignation the successive
invasions of their freedom by Enclosure Acts and press-gangs and
trials for sedition, and all the other implements of tyranny.
"The Good Old Code, like Argus, had a hundred watchful eyes,
And each old English peasant had his Good Old English spies
To tempt his starving discontent with Good Old English lies,
Then call the British Yeomanry to hush his peevish cries.
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