prevailed in the western counties. Tenant farmers came in more slowly than landowners and labourers, and seemed to have little faith in the amalgamation of the upper and the lower millstones between which they have to grind. Most of the great landowners and their agents also held aloof from active participation, though a few of them helped our funds by liberal donations and subscriptions. But the real leaders, both among landowners and farmers, could not be brought to see that their hearty support and active assistance would do more to promote agricultural prosperity than the cattle shows, which the County and National Agri¬ cultural Societies seem to look on as the one object of their existence. I do not remember that either the Royal, the Western Counties, the Home Counties, or the Highland Societies ever gave us the slightest recognition or help as corporate associations, though some of their individual members joined the N.A.U.
Our first two or three annual meetings at the St. James’s Hall were packed by an enthusiastic attendance from all parts of the country, and on one of these occasions I succeeded in bringing the house clown by a happily expressed phrase or two, which made me realise for the first time the pleasure which other men who have the gift of natural eloquence must always feel in addressing a large and sympathetic audience.
I found, however, as time went on, that it was impossible to give that constant personal attention at committees in London which one must give if one puts one’s heart into a work like this, and my own attendance and interest, like that of others who had started full of hope, fell off from various causes.
Lord Winchilsea, who had worked harder than his constitution would bear, fell ill; his continued absence deprived us of a leader who was the soul of the Union, and in 1898 his death threw a cloud of grief over the numerous supporters who realised his self-devotion in this matter, and left the N.AU. without a leading spirit. It still survives and may yet be regenerated when a new man comes forward who can galvanise into activity the slow pulse of the rural population; but the difficulty of effec¬ tively organising the agricultural forces of all England into a common body for united action is and probably always will be insuperable.
The extension of the vote to agricultural labourers in 1885 produced a very great change in the relations between master and servant, which had so long been of a very fairly satisfactory character on most Cotswold farms. The Agricultural Laboured Union had never become very in¬ fluential in the district, and except on one or two occasions where the want of tact, or unpopularity of a farmer, had caused temporary or partial strikes among the labourers in a certain small area, farmers and men had got on without any outward and visible symptoms of ill-feeling.
Though some of the farmers had grown, up during a period when the men were very much more kept under than they are now, and treated them with scant consideration when dispute arose, yet on the whole they were not tyrannical nor unjust in daily life, nor wanting in kindness and liberality when sickness or accident threw men out of work. But as the bad times reduced their moans and soured their tempers, they reduced wages when they could and perhaps were not so easy to get on with.
