ABSTRACT
For many years past, the labourer has not been sufficiently paid, so as to induce, or warrant, compulsory measures to urge him to make a provision in the days of his strength for the support of his family, or for the comfort of his own declining years. The increased value of the land, founded on the high prices of provisions, may be traced to about the year 1790. At that period, the farmers began to assume higher pretensions than heretofore; they disdained the society of servants in their houses, and regarded them as a distinct and separate body. The labourer, driven from the comforts of his master’s fire-side, and no longer held under the domestic restraint which had formerly regulated his conduct, married prematurely in his own defence, to obtain the comforts of a home.
