Part 8

The justices still hesitated; but Barton and two or three of the farmers of the village represented to them that there always used to be a public house; that it was in many respects inconvenient to be without one; and that in this instance, it would give occupation and maintenance to a poor family. At length the magistrates said, that in general they were not disposed to increase the number of ale-houses, but that they would give way to the declared wish of almost all the leading men in the parish. In a case of doubt, they naturally leant to the side of _good-nature_. Accordingly the licence was granted.

Fowler was overjoyed at his success, and after making his acknowledgments, set off, first to the carpenter, and then to the painter, to give directions for a sign and its appendages. After these matters of business, he could not think of returning without drinking the health of the magistrates at the Red Lion.

Several friends dropped in to congratulate him; and when he thought about going home, he was not quite able to walk straight. The butcher's boy, who had made one of the party at the Red Lion, offered to give him a lift in his cart. They set off in high glee, and the exalted state of their spirits induced them to urge on the horse. Though the night was dark and the horse sometimes swerved to one side of the road and sometimes to the other, yet the light colour of the road served for a guide, and they felt that as long as they kept to that they were safe. They were mistaken, however. They were within a mile of Inglewood, and had got the horse almost into a gallop, when all at once the wheel came upon one of the heaps of stones, which had been shot down in the _quartering_, and the cart was overturned. Peter, the butcher's boy, called out that he was killed; but having got up and shaken himself, and found that he had received no sort of injury, he burst into a loud fit of laughter.

Poor Fowler, however, lay groaning in the road, unable to stir. He was severely bruised, and both the bones of his right leg were broken. Peter scratched his head, and was quite at a loss what to do, when luckily Farmer Barton and one of his neighbours came to the spot, in their way back from market. They extricated the horse, which, having put his foot in the deep rut, had fallen with the cart, and then raised the cart without difficulty. It was not, however, so easy a matter to get Fowler into it. He cried out from pain every time that they took hold of him, and sometimes begged that they would leave him to die where he was. At last, however, they succeeded, and at a slow pace he was conveyed to his humble cottage, which was soon to assume the dignity and importance of a public house.

His wife helped to get him to bed, though not without reproaching him with some asperity for staying so long at the Red Lion after he had sent her home. Having taken as much care of him, as in her opinion he deserved, she hastened down stairs to comfort herself with some tea, of which two or three of her neighbours, who had been brought to the house by the tidings of the accident, were invited to partake. The condolences and lamentations were soon over, and they fell into the usual train of village gossip. The hardness of the times, of course, was one of the topics of conversation. "Well, Hannah," said one of the party, "and what did you get from the justices?"

"Oh! there's no use in a poor person's going to them," said Hannah, "they're all for the farmers?"

"I wonder to hear you say that," said Nanny, who was naturally disposed to be in good humour with the magistrates, who had just granted a licence to her husband; "I wonder to hear you say that, for as I was going out of the room, I fell in with two or three overseers, who were saying just the contrary. They were complaining that the justices were ready to hear all the idle stories of the poor about wanting relief, and that they were much too apt to order some little addition. In fact, they said, that they were all in favour of the poor; and the farmers could not stand it."

"If the poor complain that they were in favour of the farmers, and the farmers that they favoured the poor," said an old man sitting in the chimney corner, "I dare say they pretty nearly did the thing that was right between both parties."

"Well," said Hannah, "if I was a justice, I could'nt bear that the poor should think me _ill-natured_. Be it how it would, I'd take care to have _their_ good word, even if I did now and then order a trifle more than was quite right."

"What should you say, Hannah," said the same old man, "of a justice who acted contrary to law for the sake of a sum of money?"

"What! a bribe! Why I'd have him turned out before he was a day older."

"And is not acting contrary to law for the sake of any one's good will, or good word, pretty much the same as doing so for a bribe? A magistrate is sworn to do justice, according to law, to the best of his knowledge."

All the women, however, consoled themselves with the near approach of the time, when the poor would have to apply for their weekly allowances to Farmer Barton instead of Farmer Oldacre; it being the custom of the parish that the overseers should divide the year between them, each taking the trouble of the office for six months.

"Yes, indeed," said Hannah Bolt, "it will be a happy day for us poor creatures, when Mr. Barton takes the books;--Farmer Oldacre was always a hard man to the poor."

"Farmer Oldacre a hard man to the poor!" said old John Truman, who came in at the moment from the sick man's room--"Farmer Oldacre a hard man to the poor! I'm sure you're an ungrateful woman for saying so; as I should be an ungrateful man, if I allowed you to say it without taking you to task.--I've worked for him now these seventeen years, and a better or a kinder master cannot be. Did'nt I see you, Hannah, day after day, when your little boy was ill, going to his house, sometimes for a little milk, sometimes for a little made wine, and did he ever refuse you? did he ever refuse _any_ poor person, who was really in want, any thing that he was able to give?"

"I can't say but that he's ready enough to help a poor body with any thing he has himself; but then if one asks him for a little more parish relief, he's so terrible particular, and asks so many questions, that it's quite unpleasant, and perhaps we can get nothing after all."

"In short," said John, "you mean to say that he is liberal and kind in giving from his own pocket, but careful and cautious how he makes free with the pockets of other people. And then again--who employs so many men as Farmer Oldacre? I'm sure I have often known him in the winter try to find out jobs for the sake of keeping the men at work; and after all I believe, that he feels the change of times as much as any man, and that he and his family allow themselves little beyond bare necessaries. And even with respect to parish relief, I believe that the _old_ men and women, who are really past work, are better off when Farmer Oldacre has the books, than at any other time."

"But then," answered Hannah, "Farmer Barton is so _good-natured_ when we go to him. He says that a shilling or two cannot signify to the farmers, and is not worth thinking about."

"I believe it would be better for all parties," replied Truman, "if the able-bodied poor thought less of running to the parish, and more of depending, under God's blessing, on themselves. When I was young, a man would have been ashamed of begging for parish relief. Indeed, the law was, that those who were relieved were to be marked by a badge. I know that I contrived to bring up a family of seven children without being beholden to any body. For a few years it was certainly hard work, but God helped us on."

"But wages," said Nanny Fowler, "were better in those days."

"Compared with what they would buy, perhaps they were, but their being low now is, I take it, partly owing to the poor rates."

"Why how can you make that out?" cried the whole party.

"In the first place, can you tell me, why wheat is so cheap just at present? It was, you know, ten shillings the bushel, and indeed sometimes a great deal more--it is now less than five."

"Why it's cheap to be sure, because there is such plenty of it."

"And is it not the over-plenty of labourers, that makes labour cheap? I remember this village when there were not more than fifty labourers' families, each with a cottage to itself; now there are upwards of eighty families, and sometimes two crammed together in one house. I have read in the newspapers, that the people throughout England have increased in the last twenty years thirty-two in every hundred--that is, where there were but ten, there are now more than thirteen."

"But what has that to do with the poor rates?"

"Why do not you think that the poor rates are an encouragement to early marriages?"

"And what then," said Hannah; "did not the Almighty say, _Increase and multiply_?"

"The command to _increase and multiply and replenish the earth_, was given--_first_, when there were upon the face of the whole earth no men and women at all, excepting the first pair: and _again_, when all mankind had been destroyed, with the exception of the family of Noah. The world was pretty well empty of inhabitants then, and wanted _replenishing_. But the case is different in an old inhabited country, which is already so _replenished_--so full and over-full--that the people stand in each other's way."

"But surely, John, you are not for preventing marriages?"

"Heaven forbid!" said the old man, wiping a tear of thankfulness from his eye; "Heaven forbid! It is to marriage that I owe the greater part of the happiness that I have enjoyed in this life; and marriage, I trust, has assisted in preparing me, through divine grace and the merits of my Redeemer, for happiness in the life to come. I know too who it is that has said, _Marriage is honourable in all_.--No, no, I am no enemy to marriage, I am its warmest friend. But then, as the Prayer-Book tells us, there are _two_ ways of engaging in marriage. Men may either enter upon it _reverently_, _discreetly_, _advisedly_, and _in the fear of God_; or else they may engage in it _inadvisedly_, _lightly_, and _wantonly_, '_like brute beasts that have no understanding_.' I am afraid that now-a-days young people are more apt to engage in marriage after the latter manner, than after the former. When I was young, men generally did not like to marry--I'm sure I did not--till they had secured a bit of a cottage to put a wife in, and a few articles of furniture, and perhaps a few pounds to begin the world with. Now boys and girls marry without thought and reflection, without sixpence beforehand, and trust to the parish for every thing--house, goods, clothes, and the maintenance of their children. As for the parish finding houses for all that wish to marry, it's what can't be done.--No, no, I don't want to prevent their marrying, I only want them to wait a very few years, that they may have a better chance of happiness when they marry. We all know, that _when want comes in at the door, love is very apt to fly out at the window_; and parish pay is but a poor dependence after all.

"And why should they not wait? Those, who are better off in the world, are for the most part forced to wait a good number of years. The sons of the farmers, of the tradesmen, and of the gentlemen, generally wait, I think, till they are nearer thirty than five and twenty. Look at Squire Bentley's family: there's his eldest son that is the counsellor, who, as they say, has been for some years engaged to one of Mr. Hale's daughters; he is now, I take it, upwards of thirty, but he waits till they have a better chance of maintaining a family. There's his second son, who is to be a physician; and the third in the army; both I dare say would be glad enough to marry, if they could marry with any sort of prudence.--It is because the poor think that the parish must find every thing, that they marry without thought or care; and then the numbers of the people increase till there are more hands than work; and that makes wages so low.

"There's another way in which the poor rates keep down the price of labour. A man is out of work. He goes round to the farmers; but they all say that they don't want him: they have hands more than enough already. He then goes to the overseer for employment.--Now the parish--if bound by law to find work for him at all, about which there seems to be some doubt--is only bound to pay him enough to keep him from starving, and for that may require a full day's work. The farmers of course know this; and as in these times it is natural for them to wish to get hands at as low a rate as possible, one of them tells this man that he will give him a trifle more than the parish, though still a _mere trifle_, and turns off one of his regular workmen to make way for him; and so it may go on, till all are brought down to the same low key.--Or perhaps the farmers will pay all the labourers, either in whole, or in part, out of the poor rates. This I take to be a very bad plan for the farmers in the end; for as men will seldom do more work than they are paid for, the work will not be done so well or so cheerfully; and besides, it sadly breaks the spirit of the labourers. In short, I wish, as I said before, that the poor depended less upon parish pay, and more upon themselves."

"But, John," said Hannah, "you are not for knocking up the poor laws altogether?"

"By no means," answered John: "I am in one sense a poor man myself; and I am glad that there is such a provision for those, who can do nothing for themselves, and for those who are thrown back by a severe sickness, or by some accident. For myself, I hope that, by the blessing of God, I shall never be forced to stoop to ask for parish relief. As my wife and I contrived to bring up a family without any help from an overseer, so when our children were old enough to get out, and take care of themselves, we began to think of putting by a trifle against old age. The savings bank notion has given us a lift, and I think that I have that there, which will keep me from being a burden to any one. As times are now, a man with a large family can't help going to the parish, and no one can blame him for it--I only wish that times were such as to enable him, with industry and prudence, to look for maintenance to no one but himself and God Almighty."

By the time that old Truman had finished this _dissertation_ on the poor laws, the surgeon had arrived. He examined Fowler's leg, and found the fracture to be as bad a one as well could be. It was attended too with a considerable degree of fever, which was increased by the heated state of the blood, occasioned by excessive drinking.

The next day he was delirious, and the fever had increased so much, that but slight hopes were entertained of his recovery. He remained for some days in this state, hanging between life and death, till at length the fever abated. The delirium too was at an end; but it left him in a state of the most deplorable weakness.

Nanny Fowler never had bestowed one serious thought upon a future life; but some of her neighbours told her, that with her husband in such a dangerous condition, she ought to desire the parson to come and see him. This she accordingly did.

Mr. Hooker, at his two or three first visits, found both body and mind so weakened, that he did little more than pray by him. Neither Fowler nor his wife entered much into the meaning or spirit of his prayers, but still they were flattered and pleased by the attention of their pastor.

For many years Fowler had hardly set foot in church, excepting once to attend the funeral of a relation, and twice as godfather to the children of two of his friends. Though he had not shewn any positive disrespect to Mr. Hooker to his face, yet he was in the habit of laughing at him behind his back, and of trying to turn whatever he did or said in the execution of his sacred office--and indeed his office itself--into ridicule. In this, according to the opinion of his thoughtless and profligate companions, he succeeded tolerably well; for he had a turn for low humour; and it is sometimes found, the more sacred any thing is, the greater is the effect of representing it in a ludicrous point of view, to those who are unrestrained by any sense of decency or of religion. From Mr. Hooker he had never received any thing but tokens of kindness, but he disliked him, because he knew that he disapproved of his manner of going on, and still more, for one or two admonitions which he had received from him. He now felt ashamed of his former disrespectful behaviour towards his worthy minister.

The fever having entirely left him, Mr. Hooker determined to take advantage of the opportunity which this accident afforded, for the purpose of endeavouring to bring Fowler to some proper sense of religion. He accordingly often talked to him in the most serious manner, trying both to inform his understanding, and to affect his heart.

One day when he called, he found Barton sitting by the bed side. The farmer immediately got up to go away; Fowler, however, begged him to stay; and Mr. Hooker was not without hopes, that what he said might not be entirely lost upon Barton, of whose religious sentiments he had but an unfavourable opinion.

After making use of the prayers in the Visitation Office, he represented to Fowler the folly of living without God in the world; the hateful nature of sin; and the awful consequences of continuing in sin without repentance. He spoke of the great atonement, but told him that the benefits even of that would be lost to those who continued hardened and impenitent. He added a few words upon the particular vice of drunkenness, upon its tendency to lead on to almost all other sins without exception, and upon its dreadful punishment in the world to come, since _drunkards can not inherit the kingdom of God_.

Fowler appeared to be attentive, and to feel what was said, and Barton looked every now and then a little uneasy. His uneasiness was occasioned, not by the slightest degree of apprehension for his own religious interests, but by the wound which his _good-nature_ received, at hearing such strong things said. The farmer accompanied Mr. Hooker down stairs; but the moment he had quitted the house, exclaimed, "I wish, Nanny, you would not let the parson come to your husband any more. I'm sure it's enough to make a man ill to hear him talk." "Why, what's the matter?" said Nanny, "what's the matter?"

"Why, he has been talking about his soul, and getting drunk, and heaven, and hell, and I know not what besides; I'm sure, I thought it very _ill-natured_ of him. It's bad enough for poor Bob to have broken his leg, without being troubled with such melancholy thoughts. And what's the use of it? There's no chance of his dying this bout, and there can be no occasion for his making himself uneasy with these church-yard thoughts yet."

"Surely you are not in earnest, neighbour," said Farmer Oldacre, who had called in to enquire how the broken leg was going on; "you cannot really mean what you say."

"Yes, but I do though," replied Barton, "and I say again, it was very _ill-natured_ of Mr. Hooker."

"I always thought," said Oldacre, "that you professed and called yourself a Christian."

"As good a Christian as yourself," rejoined Barton, with some quickness; "aye, or as Mr. Hooker _either_, though, perhaps, I mayn't talk so much about it as some people."

"Well, don't be angry," said Oldacre calmly, "but just listen to me for two minutes. If a Christian, you of course acknowledge the Scriptures to be the word of God?"

"To be sure I do."

"Well--you know--the whole parish knows--that poor Bob Fowler was leading a most ungodly and wicked life."

"No, I do _not_ know it; poor Bob was nobody's enemy but his own; and if he did get drunk now and then, what was that to any body else? I don't call that being wicked."

"And what _do_ you call being _wicked_?"

"Why, I call a man wicked, when he robs and steals, or commits murder, or--let me see--let me see--when he takes a false oath before a justice--or--when he slanders his neighbours."

"These, certainly," answered Oldacre, "are instances of great wickedness; but you seem to confine the word _wickedness_ almost entirely to offences, by which _men_ are injured; now I call a man _wicked_, when he lives in the wilful and habitual neglect of any part of his duty; and since the Scriptures tell us, that the first and chief part of our duty is our duty towards God, I particularly call a man wicked when he lives in the open neglect of that duty--when he leads, in short, an ungodly life."

Barton made no answer, but seemed to be waiting to hear what was to come next.

"Now as for poor Bob Fowler, you know very well that he never went to church, never thought of keeping holy the Lord's day, that he was in the constant habit of profane swearing, that he never spoke of religion but to laugh at it, and that instead of having God in all his thoughts, he lived in a total forgetfulness both of him and of his laws. Now the Scriptures tell us, over and over again, that _the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God_. If these words of Scripture be true--and you acknowledge yourself that they are so--Fowler was certainly in a dangerous state. Now, neighbour, suppose you were to see a blind man walking right on to the brink of a pit, and ready to fall into it, should you think it _ill-natured_ to tell him of his danger? And is it _ill-natured_ of Mr. Hooker, to try to save a man from falling into the pit of destruction?"

"But why should he do it at such a time--when Bob has a broken leg to vex him?"

"I know," replied Oldacre, "that Mr. Hooker did sometimes speak to him when he was in health; but Fowler was either sulky, or turned it into joke: he was one of those, who _sit in the seat of the scornful_; it was like _casting pearls before swine, which turn again and rend you_. His present confinement offers an opportunity for giving him some notions of religion; and our good minister, who is always on the watch for opportunities of being of use, most likely felt, that if this opportunity was not taken advantage of, he might never have another."

"But is it not enough to drive a man to despair," said Barton, "to talk to him about death and judgment, and future punishment?"

"It is rather the best way to save a man from despair. Mr. Hooker speaks to him of future misery, in order that he may escape it. I dare say that he tells him, as he tells us in church, that if he will but repent of and forsake his sins, full forgiveness is offered, through the mediation of the Redeemer. A man who wilfully goes on in a worldly, ungodly course of life, has certainly nothing before him but a _fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation_. Surely it is not _ill-natured_, but rather the kindest thing that can be done for such a man, to try to persuade him to flee from the wrath to come, by changing his course of life by the aid of God's grace, and by seeking for God's mercy through Christ, before the gates of mercy are closed for ever."

There was a pause of some minutes. Barton, however, did not like to give up his notions of _ill-nature_, and returned to the charge. "Still, I must say, neighbour Oldacre, that the parson speaks of these things much too plainly and too strongly; and, to tell you the truth, that is the reason why I so seldom go to hear him in church. It would not look well, you know, for a man like me _never_ to go to church at all, so I drop in sometimes when there is no sermon. I like to be _good-humoured_ and pleasant, and don't like to think of these melancholy subjects until I've occasion."