II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 



claimed^ " a whole ear of corn ! no wonder that 

 " poor John Bull is in such a miserable state, 

 *^ if his Lords have got swallows like that." 



25. You have a hard matter to persuade the 

 country people in America, that there can be any 

 nation upon the earth without corn. I remember 

 that our good old hostess, Mrs. Wiggins, at 

 whose tavern we lodged upon our arrival in 

 Long Island, in 1817^ when driven into exile by 

 the power-of-imprisonment bill of Sidmouth and 

 Castlereagh, asked me what sort of corn we liked 

 best in England ', and it was with the greatest 

 possible difficulty that I could make her believe 

 that we had no corn at all 3 that is to say none of 

 that which they call corn. " But," said she, 

 " how do the people live, then ?" I told her that 

 we had plenty of wheat, barley, rye, oats, pease, 

 and beans ; but still she could not conceive how a 

 people could live without corn ; how they could 

 have pork, how they could have poultry, how, in 

 short, they could live and have any thing like a 

 sufficiency of food ; and, as the Americans, very 

 much to their honour, and contrary, as far as I 

 have observed, to almost all the rest of the world, 

 wish for every people upon earth to have all th,e 

 good things which they have, how many scores 

 of times have I heard American farmers lament 

 that Indian Corn would not grow in Old Eng- 

 land 1 And, I am sure that the account of my 

 c 



