60 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



they are eager to impart &quot; what they know about farming &quot; 

 to their humble but restive dependents. 



As it is, the grumblings are loud and deep. The justice 

 of allowing thousands of fertile acres to lie waste, to no 

 other end than that their noble owner may delight himself 

 by the slaughter of partridges, pheasants, and hares, is 

 questioned, and justly questioned, in view of the vast 

 amount of farm produce that England is compelled to im 

 port to feed her teeming millions. 



The people also begin to inquire whether it be a sufficient 

 ground for their own and their children s suffering for bread 

 that William the Norman passed bad laws and gave land, 

 which did not belong to him, to his sans culotte followers 

 eight hundred years ago. Pinched, as they are, by the 

 scarcity and dearness of meat, they do not see the equity 

 of allowing a land-owner to rob the country by raising a 

 couple of rabbits, worth a shilling apiece, for the pleasure 

 of shooting them, while on what those rabbits eat and spoil 

 could be grown a sheep, furnishing a dozen times as much 

 food. These, and similar questions, are being thoroughly 

 agitated and debated. Parliament shows its knowledge 

 that these grievances are real ones, and its desire that they 

 should be shelved, by appointing commissioners to investi 

 gate them. 



A GOOD TIME COMING. 



It is evident, to all far-seeing minds, that the law of pri 

 mogeniture in England is doomed, and that with it, or per 

 haps before it, will go down the connection of the Church 

 with the State, which is intimately associated with those 

 laws. 



These relics of Norman barbarism, the primogeniture 



