cheating at
gambling generally--a good thing to discourage gambling in every
form--but in these thinly-populated outlying agricultural parishes,
where money is scarce and wages low, there never existed any temptation
to allure skittle-sharpers and similar cheaters to the spot. The game at
skittles was a legitimate game--a fair and honest struggle of skill and
strength. Nine times out of ten it was played only for a quart of ale,
to be drunk by the loser as well as the winner in good fellowship. Why
deprive the man who labours all day in wet and storm of so simple a
pleasure in the evening? The conditions are very different to those
existing in large manufacturing towns, and some modification of the law
ought to be made. The agricultural labourer has no cheap theatre at
which he can spend an hour, no music-hall, no reading-room; his only
resource is the public-house. Now that he is practically deprived of his
skittles and such games, he has no amusement left except to drink, or
play at pitch and toss on the quiet, a far worse pastime than skittles.
Skittles, of course, are allowed provided the players play for love
only; but what public-house keeper cares to put up the necessary
arrangements on such terms? The labourer will have his quart in the
evening, and, despite of all "cry" to the contrary, I believe it to be
his right to have that quart; and it is better, if he must have it, that
his whole thoughts should not be concentrated on the liquor--that he
should earn it by skill and strength. There is an opprobrium about the
public-house, and let us grant that it is at least partially
deserved--but where else is the labourer to go? He cannot for ever work
all day and sit in his narrow cabin in the evening. He cannot always
read, and those of his class who do read do so imperfectly. A
reading-room has been tried, but as a rule it fails to attract the
_purely agricultural labourer_. The shoemaker, the tailor, the village
post-master, grocer, and such people may use it; also a few of the
better-educated of the young labourers, the rising generation; but not
the full-grown labourer with a wife and family and cottage. It does good
undoubtedly; in the future, as education extends, it will become a place
of resort. But at present it fails to reach the adult genuine
agricultural labourer. For a short period in the dead of the winter the
farmers and gentry get up penny readings in many places, but these are
confined to at most one