GENERAL PREFACE 



feet high, all sown and planted by myself, will, I hope, long remain 

 as a specimen of my perseverance in this way. During my whole 

 life I have been a gardener. There is no part of the business, 

 which, first or last, I have not performed with my own hands. 

 And, as to it, I owe very little to books, except that of TULL ; 

 for I never read a good one in my life, except a French book, 

 called the Manuel du Jardinier. 



8. As to farming, I was bred at the plough-tail, and in the Hop- 

 Gardens of Farnham in Surrey, my native place, and which spot, 

 as it so happened, is the neatest in England, and, I believe, in the 

 whole world. All there is a garden. The neat culture of the 

 hop extends its influence to the fields round about. Hedges cut 

 with shears and every other mark of skill and care strike the eye 

 at Farnham, and become fainter and fainter as you go from it in 

 every direction. I have had, besides, great experience in farming 

 for several years of late ; for, one man will gain more knowledge 

 in a year than another will in a life. It is the taste for the thing 

 that really gives the knowledge. 



9. To this taste, produced in me by a desire to imitate a father 

 whom I ardently loved, and to whose very word I listened with 

 admiration, I owe no small part of my happiness, for a greater 

 proportion of which very few men ever had to be grateful to God. 

 These pursuits, innocent in themselves, instructive in their very 

 nature, and always tending to preserve health, have a constant, 

 a never-failing source, of recreation to me ; and, which I count 

 amongst the greatest of their benefits and blessings, they have 

 always, in my house, supplied the place of the card-table, the 

 dice-box, the chess-board and the lounging bottle. Time never 

 hangs on the hands of him, who delights in these pursuits, and 

 who has books on the subject to read. Even when shut up within 

 the walls of a prison, for having complained that Englishmen had 

 been flogged in the heart of England under a guard of German 

 Bayonets and Sabres ; * even then, I found in these pursuits a 

 source of pleasure inexhaustible. To that of the whole of our 

 English books on these matters, I then added the reading of all the 

 valuable French books ; and I then, for .the first time, read that 

 Book of all Books on husbandry, the work of jETiiRO TULL, to 

 the principles of whom I owe more than to all my other reading 

 and all my experience, and of which principles I hope to find time 

 to give a sketch, at least, in some future PAPT of this work. 



10. I wish it to be observed, that, in any thing which I may 

 say, during the course of this work, though truth will compel 

 me to state facts, which will, doubtless, tend to induce farmers to 

 leave England for America, I advise no one so to do. I shall set 

 down in writing nothing but what is strictly true. I myself am 



* Sentenced 9 July, 1810, to pay a fine of 1,000 ; to be imprisoned 

 2 years in Newgate Gaol, and at expiration of that time to enter 

 into a Becognizance to keep the peace for 7 years himself in the 

 Bum of 3,000, and two sureties in 1,000 each. 



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