THE JOURNAL OF HEALTH: A Monthly Magazine. PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE RURAL POOR. Ir is a common remark that diseases, and more especially those of a nervous character, are daily multiplying among us. Persons, somewhat advanced in age, assure us that cases of tic doloreux, paralysis, nervousness, hysteria, and the like, which are now so common as to come within the pale of daily experience, were, in their younger days, comparatively rare; and it is certain that epilepsy and lunacy have become, in a manner, endemic among our rural population, and to so frightful an extent, that an asylum for the lunatic and idiot is required for nearly every county; and is, in fact, in the course of erection in very many counties of this happy and prosperous island. The stalwart peasantry, who, in the glorious fields of Cressy and Poictiers, fought and conquered armies, which infinitely outnumbered their own force, are dwindling to mere ghosts of their former selves. Their thews and sinews are shrinking from their sturdy proportions-their frames are losing their hardihood, and their nerves are becoming as delicate as those of a boarding-school Miss. The reader who may be disposed to ridicule these statements, and consider them a mere flourish of rhetoric, has only to visit, on some consulting day, the dispensary of any country town, and pay a little attention to the complaints of the patients whom he will find there assembled. He will then learn, perhaps to his amazement, that the tillers of the soil, whom he has been accustomed to envy as a rough, robust race, hardened against the influences of wind and weather, and altogether exempt from the nervous and dyspeptic ailments which plague the life of the well-fed sedentary citizen, are subject (it is true, in a less degree, but still subject) to the manifold Protean maladies which unnatural habits, acting upon enervated constitutions, always generate. Somebody once asked, whether any one had ever seen a dyspeptic plough-boy. Why, dyspeptic plough-boys may now be seen in any village in England; and not only dyspeptic plough-boys, but hysterical dairymaids, nervous hedgers and ditchers, and scrofulous rickety children, as plentiful as blackberries. And it is by no means pleasant to reflect that these lackadaisical maids and hypochondriacal bumpkins are the lineal descendants of the heroes who, a mere handful in point of numbers, overran the French territories, and brought two kings captives to the court of London. Where are we to look for the cau se of this degeneracy? Why are English peasants in the days of Queen Victoria but pale and ineffectual shadows of the peasants under the feudal lords and wealthy abbots of the olden time? Alas! it is not difficult to answer this question. So long as the men of the soil, together with the soil itself, were held in a manner to belong to the great proprietor-so long as he could claim their services in peace and war, and dispose of their persons almost at his pleasure, the welfare of his peasants was the continual object of the noble lord's or reverend churchman's solicitude. Not a single individual on the estate was allowed to feel the pressure of want-no grinding labor was exacted -and their amusements and exercises were duly and religiously observed. It was the glory of the nobles to rear and train a large body of stalwart and warlike retainers; and it was the boast of the church that those under her rule were contented and prosperous. But darker times were at hand. The robber king laid his hand upon the possessions of the church (which included in land nearly a third of the area of England), and bribed the high nobility to aid and abet his purposes, by distributing among them extensive tracts of the land which he had purloined. This step immediately pauperised an immense proportion of the peasantry: for the church was proverbially a good landlord, but the new proprietors of the soil were, in many instances, very bad landlords. The ecclesiastical dignitaries let their lands at low rents for leases of long terms of years, very generally on life leases, so that, says Hume, 'The farmers regarded themselves as a species of proprietors, always taking care to renew their leases before they expired.' Now landlords of this sort necessarily created, by slow degrees, men of property, and caused to exist a class of yeomen, real yeomen, independent of the aristocracy. Monasteries could possess no private property-they could save no money; they could bequeath nothing. They had a life interest in their estate, and no more. They lived, received, and expended in common. Historians need not have told us they were easy landlords.' They must have been such, unless human nature had exhibited itself in them in a worse shape than in ordinary mortals. Again: the monastry was a proprietor that never died; its tenantry had to do with a deathless landlord; its lands and houses never changed owners; its tenants were liable to none of many uncertainties that other tenants were; its oaks had never to tremble at the axe of the squandering heir; its manors had not to dread a change of lords; its villagers had all been born and bred up under its eye and care; their character was, of necessity, a thing of great value; and, as such, would naturally be an object of great attention. A monastery was the centre of a circle in the country, naturally drawing to it all that were in need of relief, advice, and protection; and containing a body of men or of women, having no cares of their own, and having wisdom to guide the inexperienced, and wealth to relieve the distressed. The abbot and brethren had no object in amassing money; they did not desire to accumulate large sums; for, beyond keeping in repair and beautifying their monastery, they had no occasion for money. They were not, therefore, tempted to rack-rent their tenants, nor to demand from them more than that reasonable amount of service which would willingly be rendered. But, in addition to this, the church was a resident landlord, and not only expended the revenues, which she derived from the land, upon the land, but exercised a constant and wholesome supervision upon those fixed to the land; exhorting and reclaiming the idle and profligate, and encouraging the sober and industrious. The church, as a landlord, considered herself bound to watch over the bodies and souls of her tenants. It was the head of a great family, and h_d onerous duties to perform toward the inferior members. More than this: the church was the schoolmistress of the district. She taught gratuitously the children of the indigent as of the opulent. She kept open house for the wandering traveller; she distributed alms to the poor at her gate. But what happened when that lying buffoon drest in a king's robes, as Luther politely called Henry the Eighth, robbed the church of her fair acres, and bestowed them upon his sycophant courtiers? Why, in the first place, the peasantry fell under the yoke of men who had every interest in accumulating riches of men who had wives and children, and nephews, and creditors, and concubines, hungry for moneyof men, who immediately began to raise their rents, and to ruin their tenantry. The abbot, as landlord, had no interest except that the estate, during his life, should be flourishing and well-conditioned. The noble cared not for the condition of the estate, where, frequently, he never resided; but wanted money for the gaming table, his favorites, and other matters which were out of the reach of his predecessor. The abbot spent his income upon the estate; the noble, in too many instances, wasted his means in the metropolis, or in foreign parts. The Abbot instructed the young and ignorant; the noble allowed them to grow up as wild as the weeds by the hedge-side. The abbot lodged the stranger, and distributed alms to the poor; the noble refused hospitality to the former, and evicted the latter from his domain. The abbot considered his tenants as children, whose interests it was his duty to overlook and protect; the noble regarded them as machines for raising so many crops, which he might sell, and grow rich. But there was yet another reason for the general pauperism which ensued upon the transfer of church lands to the laity. While the land belonged to the church, ecclesiastical buildings, and the ministers of religion, were supported by the rent of the land; but when the layman seized the property of the church, and drove out the ancient clergy to starve or beg, his natural piety would not permit him to leave the inhabitants of the district destitute of spiritual comfort, and he, therefore, took care to provide ministers of the reformed creed-adding only the trifling stipulation that the new ministers should be supported by the farmers and peasants benefited by their presence. The layman, being conscientiously convinced that the old religion was false and idolatrous, expelled from their abodes the ministers of this false religion, and seized for his own personal use and benefit, its goods and chattels, and revenues. But it was necessary to implant among the people true religion, in place of that false one, whose priests he had ejected, and whose revenues he had appropriated-and in order to plant and promote true religion, funds were desirable; but he had no funds-that is to say, none to spare, for he wanted the revenues of the false religion for other purposes; for his wife and his children, and his pleasure. He desired to keep the gold and silver and jewels of the candlesticks shrines, that he might melt the former down into family plate, or present the latter to my ford the king's last new mistress, that she might whisper into the king's ear a favorable word, when occasion served. In short, no matter for what the money was wanted, it could not be spared for the service of religion. The funds must be raised in a different manner, and what manner of raising funds could be more natural than to take rates from the substance of the persons who were to imbibe from the lips of the new preachers the eternal truths of salvation? And so it was managed. With one hand, the nobles plundered the old church of her inherited property; and with the other, they plundered the people to found and support a new church. Bold, impudent, unscrupulous rapacity, characterised every one implicated in the transaction. This was the commencement of the deterioration of the English peasantry. Transferred en masse from the protection of their beloved masters, to the crushing yoke of, in many cases, arrogant, merciless, absentee lords, who recognised no reciprocal duties between themselves and their dependents; they fell into a state of chronic pauperism, disgraceful to the country: and from that time to this, matters have continued much the same. The modern proprietors of the soil esteem the children of the soil an encumbrance which is only to be tolerated as long as it pays a decent rent, and does not too much obstruct the improvements which they intend to carry out. Landlords hold the children born upon the land to be as but pale and ineffectual shadows of the peasants under the feudal lords and wealthy abbots of the olden time? Alas! it is not difficult to answer this question. So long as the men of the soil, together with the soil itself, were held in a manner to belong to the great proprietor-so long as he could claim their services in peace and war, and dispose of their persons almost at his pleasure, the welfare of his peasants was the continual object of the noble lord's or reverend churchman's solicitude. Not a single individual on the estate was allowed to feel the pressure of want-no grinding labor was exacted -and their amusements and exercises were duly and religiously observed. It was the glory of the nobles to rear and train a large body of stalwart and warlike retainers; and it was the boast of the church that those under her rule were contented and prosperous. But darker times were at hand. The robber king laid his hand upon the possessions of the church (which included in land nearly a third of the area of England), and bribed the high nobility to aid and abet his purposes, by distributing among them extensive tracts of the land which he had purloined. This step immediately pauperised an immense proportion of the peasantry: for the church was proverbially a good landlord, but the new proprietors of the soil were, in many instances, very bad landlords. The ecclesiastical dignitaries let their lands at low rents for leases of long terms of years, very generally on life leases, so that, says Hume, 'The farmers regarded themselves as a species of proprietors, always taking care to renew their leases before they expired.' Now landlords of this sort necessarily created, by slow degrees, men of property, and caused to exist a class of yeomen, real yeomen, independent of the aristocracy. Monasteries could possess no private property-they could save no money; they could bequeath nothing. They had a life interest in their estate, and no more. They lived, received, and expended in common. Historians need not have told us they were easy landlords.' They must have been such, unless human nature had exhibited itself in them in a worse shape than in ordinary mortals. Again: the monastry was a proprietor that never died; its tenantry had to do with a deathless landlord; its lands and houses never changed owners; its tenants were liable to none of many uncertainties that other tenants were; its oaks had never to tremble at the axe of the squandering heir; its manors had not to dread a change of lords; its villagers had all been born and bred up under its eye and care; their character was, of necessity, a thing of great value; and, as such, would naturally be an object of great attention. A monastery was the centre of a circle in the country, naturally drawing to it all that were in need of relief, advice, and protection; and containing a body of men or of women, having no cares of their own, and having wisdom to guide the inexperienced, and wealth to relieve the distressed. The abbot and brethren had no object in amassing money; they did not desire to accumulate large sums; for, beyond keeping in repair and beautifying their monastery, they had no occasion for money. They were not, therefore, tempted to rack-rent their tenants, nor to demand from them more than that reasonable amount of service which would willingly be rendered. But, in addition to this, the church was a resident landlord, and not only expended the revenues, which she derived from the land, upon the land, but exercised a constant and wholesome supervision upon those fixed to the land; exhorting and reclaiming the idle and profligate, and encouraging the sober and industrious. The church, as a landlord, considered herself bound to watch over the bodies and souls of her tenants. It was the head of a great family, and hd onerous duties to perform toward the inferior members. More than this: the church was the schoolmistress of the district. She taught gratuitously the children of the indigent as of the opulent. She kept open house for the wandering traveller; she distributed alms to the poor at her gate. But what happened when that 'lying buffoon drest in a king's robes, as |