16 FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 
land was too fat, and afforded not to the well-fed farmer 
sufficient work. 
“ Pater ipse colendi 
Haud facilem esse viam voluit.” 
It was not easy to get a crop of corn from the heights and 
mountains of Scotland, or from the sides of Exmoor or 
Dartmoor ; God had appointed that industry and energy 
should be the lot of the greatest part of mankind ; but the 
inhabitants of these fertile valleys formed a pitiable excep- 
tion; where God had done much, man was a lazy animal, 
and would do little; and where farmers had nothing to do 
but to buy lean Welch cattle—turn them into the Bridg- 
water meadows to walk about and get fat—drive them 
fattened to Bristol, and come home with the money in their 
pocket—where this was the case, he had compassion on 
them. It was a temptation to idleness, which led to every 
vice and every disease, both of the body and the mind. 
The farmer under such circumstances is under continual 
temptation to become indolent and sottish—he might eat, 
drink and smoke too much and get gout, and die of indi- 
gestion. Therefore he said to those farmers who occupied 
the fertile valleys of Somerset, that on all the principles of 
human nature they ought to be bad farmers. Tenants on 
bad lands must be good farmers, or they must starve ; but 
by all the usual motives of human conduct the occupiers of 
rich lands will be made bad farmers, and whenever they are 
good, how great was their merit in resisting the temptations 
by which they were assailed! They had in the low Somer- 
setshire valleys the very fat of the earth—the scourings of, 
the impoverished hills about Sherborne which were washed 
down the valley to make the fertile marsh lands that 
extended from Ilchester to the sea; into the fertile valleys 
“ 
Er 
EACH EEE N 
