The Baron Court of Little Brought -in. 367 



rats were just as numerous as ever they had been in the old barn. The 

 reason of this will appear in good time, but we must take things in 

 their proper order. 



The Baron Court of Little Brought-in has two sides and an end. 

 The benches on the one side were, at the time when many important 

 questions came before the court, called the "Mutton-bottoms," and 

 those on the other side the " Pork-bottoms ;" but these names are not 

 constant, as the members jig about and cross from the one to the 

 other, at a certain air which the baron occasionally plays, sometimes 

 on the haut-bois, and at other times on the German-Jlute, the latter 

 being a very soft and sweet-toned instrument in the baron's hands. 

 At times also, these parties would shift sides of the court from under- 

 standings among themselves. But change as they might, each party 

 professed to adhere to the same notions of things, which they called 

 principles, but there were some folks who said they were only pro- 

 fessions^ though this might be jealousy as they who said so were of 

 neither party. At all events that is matter of opinion, and we wish 

 to stick to matters of fact. 



The Mutton-bottoms contended that every man who had a plough 

 of his own'ought to kill his own mutton, if so inclined ; that every 

 able-bodied cottager, whether handicraft or labourer, should, if he 

 chose, keep a pig entirely for his own use; and that even a lone 

 woman in a sufferance cabin might keep two or three fowls. 



The Pork-bottoms, on the other hand, were furiously opposed to 

 the Mutton-bottoms on all these three points. They contended that 

 no man who put his hand to a plough, or any other implement of 

 work, had any business to eat mutton, and that for cottagers to eat 

 pork or have pigs for themselves, or for lone women to have fowls, 

 was absolutely "flying in the face of heaven;" and they quoted a 

 number of old statutes, whereby it was provided, that all the muttons, 

 and the pigs, and the pullets, were vested in perpetuity, nine-tenths 

 in the great farmers, to whom the bulk of themselves belonged, and 

 the remaining tenth in the parsons, who were generally the younger 

 branches of their families, or such as were not very fit for any thing 

 else. 



They came to issue on these points, the Muttons declaring roundly 

 that " they who win have a right to wear," and the Porks as stoutly 

 bawling out that that would upset " a something" which they called the 

 " constitution." When pushed to tell what this constitution was, they 

 hemmed and mumbled for a time, without being able to catch a de- 

 finition by the tail ; and then they took to their high horse, pleaded 

 what they called their " privilege," and said that " a gentleman had 

 no obligation to explain any thing, a gentleman's word was 



enough, and they who would not believe that, might be in 



their unbelief," to which all their reverend approvers said " amen." 



The barony was completely split into parties by these disputes of 

 the Muttons and the Porks in the court. Those who did not under- 

 stand either side, or even their own notions of things very clearly, 

 sided with the Porks, judging that "the constitution" must be some 

 wonderful thing as nobody appeared to understand anything about 

 it. There was a pleasant story told of the principal overseer of a 



