don’t they go among the heathen?’ ‘They don’t go,’ said the old man whom I had first asked, ‘because they are rich, they have all the land they need, they want the money in order to get rid of the poor parsons. I know what they want. I know them too long for that.’ ‘But, good friends,’ I asked, ‘you surely do not always come out of the church with such bitter feelings towards the preacher? Why do you go at all?’ ‘What for do we go?’ said the woman. ‘We must, if we do not want to lose everything, work and all, we must.’ I learned later that they had certain little privileges of firewood and potato land (which they paid for!) on condition of going to church.” After describing their poverty and ignorance, the correspondent closes by saying: “And now I boldly assert that the condition of these people, their poverty, their hatred of the church, their external submission and inward bitterness against the ecclesiastical dignitaries, is the rule among the country parishes of England, and its opposite is the exception.”
If the peasantry of England shows the consequences which a numerous agricultural proletariat in connection with large farming involves for the country districts, Wales illustrates the ruin of the small holders. If the English country parishes reproduce the antagonism between capitalist and proletarian, the state of the Welsh peasantry corresponds to the progressive ruin of the small bourgeoisie in the towns. In Wales are to be found, almost exclusively, small holders, who cannot with like profit sell their products as cheaply as the larger, more favourably situated English farmers, with whom, however, they are obliged to compete. Moreover, in some places the quality of the land admits of the raising of live stock only, which is but slightly profitable. Then, too, these Welsh farmers, by reason of their separate nationality, which they retain pertinaciously, are much more stationary than the English farmers. But the competition among themselves and with their English neighbours (and the increased mortgages upon their land consequent upon this) has reduced them to such a state that they can scarcely live at all; and because they have not recognised the true cause of their wretched condition, they attribute it to