WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 123 



pcMiny weight of it, hundreds of tons, all shipped over 

 tlic sea to India, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, and, 

 ahov^e all, America, to buy wheat. It was said that 

 I'ompey and his sons covered the great earth with their 

 bones, for each one died in a different quarter of the 

 world ; but now he would want two more sons for Aus- 

 tralia and America, the two new quarters which are now 

 at work ploughing, sowing, reaping, without a month's 

 intermission, growing corn for us. When you buy a 

 bag of flour at the baker's you pay fivepence over the 

 counter, a very simple transaction. Still you do not 

 expect to get even that little bag of flour for nothing, 

 )()ur fivepence goes over the counter in somebody else's 

 till. Consider now the broad ocean as the counter and 

 yourself to represent thirty-five millions of English 

 people buying sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen million 

 quarters of wheat from the nations opposite, and paying 

 f(jr it shiploads of gold. 



So that these sacks of corn in the market are truly 

 filled with gold dust ; and how strange it seems at first 

 that our farmers, who are for ever dabbling with 

 their hands in these golden sands, should be for ever 

 grumbling at their poverty ! ' The nearer the church the 

 farther from God ' is an old country proverb ; the nearer 

 to wheat the farther from mammon, I may construct as 

 an addendum. Quite lately a gentleman told me that 

 while he grew wheat on his thousand acres he lost just a 

 pound an acre per annum, i.e. a thousand a year out of 

 capital, so that if he had not happily given up this 

 amusement he would now have been in the workhouse 

 munching the putty there supplied for bread. 



The rag and bone men go from door to door filling 

 an old bag with scraps of linen, and so innumerable 

 agents of bankers and financiers, vampires that suck 



