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The land sold at so high a price is situated near a town, and the purchasers pay him an annual rent of 50s. per acre, for provision grounds on the more distant parts of the estate. Again, in most districts, the labourers are possessed of horses, for which they often pay handsomely.
Whatever may be the cause, it is certain that they do exhibit an improvement, and are much 'smarter' than they used to be. It would be untrue to say that no troubles with the labourers have arisen in meadow districts. There has been some friction about wages, but not nearly approaching the agitation elsewhere.
At another place they came to a shambles, where Armenian soldiers, deprived of their arms, and sent to make roads, had been slaughtered: at another there were three gangs of labourers, one Moslem, one Greek, and one Armenian. These latter were guarded.
As for Theobald's own parishioners, the farmers were civil and the labourers and their wives obsequious. There was a little dissent, the legacy of a careless predecessor, but as Mrs Theobald said proudly, "I think Theobald may be trusted to deal with that." The church was then an interesting specimen of late Norman, with some early English additions.
I think, however, that a better spirit is in progress amongst the companies requiring this class of labourers; in fact it becomes necessary this should be so, since, prolific as is the country from whence they are drawn, the supply would in a little time cease to keep pace with the demand, and slave labour cannot be substituted to any extent, being much too expensive; a good slave costs at this time two hundred pounds sterling, and to have a thousand such swept off a line of canal in one season, would call for prompt consideration.
But there are capitalists, "undertakers" and labourers, merchants and retail dealers and contractors, and so forth, just as certainly as there are generals and privates, horse, foot, and artillery; and their mutual relations are equally definable.
Independent of interest, Christian charity and justice should alike suggest that the labourers ought to be provided with decent quarters, that sufficient medical aid should always be at hand, and above all, that the brutalizing, accursed practice of extorting extra labour by the stimulus of corn spirit should be wholly forbidden.
Nevertheless, if we take a wider view of affairs, and consider what, without violating possibility, might conceivably take place in the course of a few disastrous centuries, the mass of modern labourers might gradually secede from the position which they at present occupy, and, spreading themselves in families or small industrial groups over the vast agricultural areas which still remain unoccupied, might keep themselves alive by labouring under their own direction, as men have done in earlier ages, and as savages do still.
The manager is a Frenchman, and most of the workmen are Frenchmen, with wages averaging from forty to fifty baiocchi; labourers at the works have from twenty-five to thirty baiocchi per day, from a shilling to fifteenpence. During the reign of Gregory XVI. machinery was admitted into the Papal States at a nominal duty, or one baiocchi the hundred Roman pounds.
The building had been hurried on through the early summer in order that this might be achieved; and although the fittings were not completed, and the outward signs of the masons and labourers had not been removed, although the heaps of mortar were still there, and time had not yet sufficed to have the chips cleared away, on Sunday the fifteenth of July the chapel was opened.
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