CLIMATE, SEASONS, E&amp;lt;TC. 



1818. 



Feb. 16. The means, accumulated in the small house, enabled 

 a son to rear the large one ; and, though, when 

 pride enters the door, the small house is sometimes 

 demolished, few sons in America have the folly or 

 want of feeling to commit such acts of filial in 

 gratitude, and of real self-abasement. For, what 

 inheritance so valuable and so honourable can a son 

 enjoy as the proofs of his father s industry and 

 virtue ? The progress of wealth and ease and 

 enjoyment, evinced by this regular increase of the 

 size of the farmers dwellings, is a spectacle, at once 

 pleasing, in a very high degree, in itself ; and, in 

 the same degree, it speaks the praise of the system 

 of government, under which it has taken place. 

 What a contrast with the farm-houses in England I 

 There the little farm-houses are falling into ruins, 

 or, are actually become cattle-sheds, or, at best, 

 cottages, as they are called, to contain a miserable 

 labourer, who ought to have been a farmer, as his 

 grandfather was. Five or six farms are there now 

 levelled into one, in defiance of the law : for, there 

 is a law to prevent it. The farmer has, indeed, a 

 fine house : but, what a life do his labourers lead ! 

 The cause of this sad change is to be found in the 

 crushing taxes ; and the cause of them, in the 

 Borough usurpation, which has robbed the people 

 of their best right, and, indeed, without which right, 

 they can enjoy no other. They talk of the augmented 

 population of England ; and, when it suits the pur 

 poses of the tyrants, they boast of this fact, as they 

 are pleased to call it, as a proof of the fostering 

 nature of their government ; though, just now, they 

 are preaching up the vile and foolish doctrine of 

 PARSON MALTHUS, who thinks, that there are too 

 many people, and that they ought (those who labour, 

 at least) to be restrained from breeding so fast. But, 

 as to the fact, I do not believe it. There can be 

 nothing in the shape of proof : for no actual enum 

 eration was ever taken till the year 1800. We know 

 well, that London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bath, 

 Portsmouth, Plymouth, and all Lancashire and 

 Yorkshire, and some other countries, have got a vast 

 increase of miserable beings huddled together. 

 But, look at Devonshire, Somersetshire, Dorset 

 shire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, and other counties. 

 You will there see hundreds of thousands of acres of 

 land, where the old marks of the plough are visible, 

 but which have not been cultivated for, perhaps, 

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