IV.
Peasant Life in Dorset.
(Golden Hours, 1872.)
It is, I suppose, an undisputed fact that the Dorset labourer has worked for generations at a lower money wage than any other member of the agricultural community. I suppose, too, it is an undisputed fact that the cottage in which he has been compelled to live has long been a byword and a reproach. I know that the question of wages in Dorsetshire is embarrassed by a number of so-called privileges, and by opportunities of extra earnings; nevertheless, there can be little doubt that the labourer in Dorset has been, and still is, notwithstanding the rise in wages which has taken place in some districts, worse off than in any other part of the land.
So wretched indeed has been his lot, that Sir Charles Trevelyan is probably within the truth when he says, "The state of our southern peasantry is worse than the present state of the peasantry in the greater part of Ireland."
Many people no doubt console themselves with the belief that such a condition of things is not so hard as it seems, considering what dull, coarse-minded clodhoppers the people are who have to endure it. As a matter of fact, however, natures of the gentlest mould may be met with perhaps as frequently among "dull clodhoppers" as among the classes above them in the social scale.
The peculiarity in Dorset is that such natures are not so much the exception as the rule. The Dorset peasantry are gentlefolk by birth. It is not that veneer which the most thorough scoundrel can easily assume, but that native inbred refinement, that perception of beauty and fitness, which is almost, if not quite, a divine gift.
