en, must do as the farmer thought best. They must
live here or there, marry so and so, or forfeit favour--in short, obey
the parental head. Each farmer was king in his own domain; the united
farmers of a parish were kings of the whole place. They did not use the
power circumstances gave them harshly; but they paid very little regard
to the liberty of the subject. To this very day something of the same
sort goes on. It is wonderful with what eager zeal many of the old-style
farmers enter into the details of a labourer's life, and carefully
ascertain his birth, his parentage, his marriage, his wife's parentage,
and the very minutest matters. These facts thus accumulated are talked
over in the boardroom when an applicant comes to the union for relief.
Very often such special knowledge possessed by a guardian of the
antecedents of the applicant is most useful and beneficial in enabling
the Board to extend assistance to a deserving man. What I wish to show
is the all-permeating influence of the parental system in the mind of
the typical agriculturist.

In religion it is, or lately was, the same. It was not a matter with the
farmer of the Athanasian creed, or the doctrine of salvation by faith,
or any other theological dogma. To him the parish church was the centre
of the social system of the parish. It was the keystone of that parental
plan of government that he believed in. The very first doctrine preached
from the pulpit was that of obedience. "Honour thy father and mother"
was inculcated there every seventh day. His father went to church, he
went to church himself, and everybody else ought to go. It was as much a
social gathering as the dinner at the market ordinary, or the annual
audit dinner of their common landlord. The dissenter, who declined to
pay church-rates, was an unsocial person. He had left the circle. It was
not the theology that they cared about, it was the social nonconformity.
In a spiritual sense, too, the clergyman was the father of the parish,
the shepherd of the flock--it was a part of the great system. To go a
step farther, in political affairs the one leading idea still threaded
itself through all. The proper parliamentary representative--the natural
law-giver--was the landlord of the district. He was born amongst them,
walked about amongst them, had been in their houses many a time. He knew
their wants, their ideas, their views. His own interest was identical
with theirs. Therefore he was the man. Th