FOOD AND RAIMENT 



* hands the things which be good, that they may have to give to 

 &quot; him who needeth,&quot; and not go on any longer gormandizing and 

 swilling upon the labour of those who need. 



316. Besides the great quantity of work performed by the 

 American labourer, his skill, the versatility of his talent, is a great 

 thing. Every man can use an ax, a saw, and a hammer. Scarcely 

 one who cannot do any job at rough carpentering, and mend a 

 plough or a waggon. Very few indeed, who cannot kill and dress 

 pigs and sheep, and many of them Oxen and Calves. Every 

 farmer is a neat butcher ; a butcher for market : and, of course, 

 &quot; the boys &quot; must learn. This is a great convenience. It makes 

 you so independent as to a main part of the means of housekeeping. 

 All are ploughmen. In short, a good labourer here, can do any 

 thing that is to be done upon a farm. 



317. The operations necessary in miniature cultivation they are 

 \ r ery awkward at. The gardens are ploughed in general. An 

 American labourer uses a spade in a very awkward manner. They 

 poke the earth about as if they had no eyes ; and toil and muck 

 Themselves half to death to dig as much ground in a day as a 

 Surrey man would dig in about an hour of hard work. Banking, 

 hedging, they know nothing about. They have no idea of the use 

 of a bill-hook, which is so adroitly used in the coppices of Hamp 

 shire and Sussex. An ax is their tool, and with that tool, at 

 cutting dovjn trees or cutting them up, they will do ten times as much 

 in a day as any other men that I ever saw. Set one of these men 

 on upon a wood of timber trees, and his slaughter will astonish 

 you. A neighbour of mine tells a story of an Irishman, who 

 promised he could do any thing, and whom, therefore, to begin 

 with, the employer sent into the wood to cut down a load of wood 

 to burn. He staid a long while away with the team, and the 

 farmer went to him fearing some accident had happened. &quot; What 

 are you about all this time ? &quot; said the farmer. The man was 

 hacking away at a hickory tree, but had not got it half down ; 

 and that was all he had done. An American, black or white, 

 would have had half a dozen trees cut down, cut up into lengths, 

 put upon the carriage, and brought home, in the time. 



318. So that our men, who come from England, must not 

 expect, that, in these common labours of the country, they are to 

 surpass, or even equal these &quot; Yankees,&quot; who, of all men that I 

 ever saw, are the most active and the most hardy. They skip 

 over a fence like a greyhound. They will catch you a pig in an 

 open field by racing him down ; and they are afraid of nothing. 

 This was the sort of stuff that filled the frigates of DECATUR, 

 HULL, and BRAINBRIDGE. No wonder that they triumphed when 

 opposed to poor pressed creatures, worn out by length of service 

 and ill-usage, and encouraged by no hope of fair-play. My LORD 

 COCHRANE said, in his place in&quot; parliament, that it would be so ; 

 and so it was. Poor CASHMAN, that brave Irishman, with his 

 dying breath, accused the government and the merchants of 



