25 MAY 1872, Page 2

The Huntingdon farmers are not apparently very wise folk. They

have appealed to force against their labourers, who out- number them by ten to one. A meeting of labourers was called at Yaxley on Tuesday, and attended by about a thousand men, who assembled on the green, and proceeded to discuss their griev- ances soberly enough. The farmers, however, resolved to silence them, and to show their scorn of the meeting as a sort of crows' Parliament, kept shaking the wooden bird-clappers with which boys frighten the crows. The men bore this insolence for a little while, but at last rushed at the farmers, thrashed them soundly, and drove them into Taxley, where the shopkeepers turned out to- protect their customers. The labourers' wives, it is stated, were especially roused, and advised an attack on the homesteads ; but quieter counsels prevailed, and the labourers only resolved to stand out for two more shillings than they would prfivionsly to the outrage have accepted.