116 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



Westminster s park.&quot; A great, fresh pile of bombasti 

 towers and battlements to shelter a gate and protect the 

 woman who opens it from rain and frost. It is but re 

 cently finished, and costs, says the printer, 10,000. 



What says the beggar ? Free trade and the Irish havt 

 cut down wages, since he used to work on the farms, from 

 five shillings to eighteen pence. I don t believe it. 



He reasserts it, though. He has stood himself at Chester 

 Cross on the market day, and refused to work for four and 

 sixpence, and all the beer he could drink. It may be true 

 the printer tells us ; in the old Bonaparte years, in harvest 

 time, it was not unlikely to have been so. With wheat 

 at a guinea a bushel, the farmers did not have the worst of 

 it even then. Those were good times for farmers. Soldiers 

 can t reap, but they must eat. The government borrowed 

 money to pay the farmers for supporting the war, and now 

 the farmers are paying the debt. 



&quot; Give me something to buy a little bread, good sirs, 

 repeats the old man ; &quot;I can t work, and my son .... 

 These dirty Irish and this cussed free trade &quot; 



Hark ! horns and kettle-drums ! Come on. It is the 



band of the yeomanry ; we shall see them directly 



There ! Five squadrons of mounted men trotting over a 

 broad green meadow below us. Well mounted they seem 

 to be, and well seated too. Ay ; fox hunting will make 

 good cavalry. Doubtless many of those fellows have been 

 after the hounds. 



Possibly. But never one of them charged a buffalo herd, 

 I ll be bound. 



This green plain a sort of public lawn in front of the 

 town is about twice as large as Boston Common, and is 

 called &quot;The Roodee.&quot; It is free from trees, nothing but a 



