ABUNDANCE OF EMPLOY. 15 



until the very verge of winter. Then comes our 

 employment for this dark season of the -year, the 

 breaking of our limestone for the use of the roads, 

 of which we afford a large supply to less favoured 

 districts. This material is not to be sought for in 

 distant places, or of difficult attainment, but to be 

 found almost at the very doors of the cottages ; and 

 old men, women, and children can obtain a com- 

 fortable maintenance by it without any great exer- 

 tion of strength, or protraction of labour. The 

 rough material costs nothing, a short pickaxe to 

 detach the stone, and a hammer to break it, are all 

 the tools required. A man or healthy woman can 

 easily supply about a ton in the day, a child that 

 goes on steadily, about one-third of this quantity ; 

 and as we give one shilling for a ton, a man, his 

 wife, and two tolerable-sized children, can obtain 

 from two shillings and eightpence to three shillings 

 per day by this employ the greater part of the win- 

 ter j and should the weather be bad, they can work 

 at intervals, and various broken hours, and obtain 

 something and there is a constant demand for the 

 article. The winter accumulation is carted away 

 as the frost occurs, or the spring repair comes on. 

 Our labourers, their children and cottages, I think, 

 present a testimony of their well-doing, by the or- 

 derly, decent conduct of the former, and the com- 

 forts of the latter. There are years when we have 

 disposed of about three thousand tons of stone, 

 chiefly broken up for use by a few of our village 

 poor ; if we say by twenty families, it will have 



