THE CORNISH POOR. 215 



rid of a nuisance by the unheard-of process of stomaching a nuisance ! Day after day 

 passed on, and rats disappeared by hundreds, never to return. They had resisted the 

 ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns, arrayed against them; but 

 when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding 

 stew-pans, hungry mouths, sharp teeth, good digestions, and the gastric juice, what could 

 they do but give in ? Swift and sure was the destruction which now overwhelmed them 

 everybody who wanted a dinner had a strong personal interest in hunting them down to 

 the very last. In a short space of time the island was cleared of the usurpers. Cheeses 

 remained intact ; ricks were uninjured. And this is the true story of how the people of 

 Looe got rid of the rats ! 



Many causes, Mr. Collins tell us, combined to secure the poor of Cornwall from that 

 last worse consequence of poverty to which the poor in most of the other divisions of Eng- 

 land are more or less exposed. The number of inhabitants in the county is stated by the 

 last census at 341,269 the number of square miles that they have to live on being 1,327. 

 This will be found, on proper computation and comparison, to be considerably under the 

 .average population of a square mile throughout the rest of England. Thus, the supply of 

 men for all purposes does not appear to be greater than the demand in Cornwall. The 

 remote situation of the county guarantees it against any considerable influx of strangers to 

 compete with the natives for work on their own ground. Mr. Collins met a farmer there who 

 -was so far from being besieged in harvest time by claimants for labour on his land, that 

 he was obliged to go forth to seek them in a neighbouring town, and was doubtful whether 

 he should find men enough left him unemployed at the mines and the fisheries to gather 

 in his crops in good time at two shillings a day and as much " victuals and drink " as they 

 ared to have. 



Another cause which has of late years contributed, in some measure, to keep Cornwall free 

 from the burthen of a surplus population of working men must not be overlooked. Emigra- 

 tion has been more largely resorted to in that county than, perhaps, in any other in Eng- 

 land. Out of the population of the Penzance Union alone nearly five per cent, left their 

 native land for Australia or New Zealand in 1849. The potato blight is assigned as the 

 chief cause of this, for it has damaged seriously the growth of a vegetable from the 

 sale of which in the London markets the Cornish agriculturist derived large profits, and on 

 which (with their fish) the Cornish poor depended as a staple article of food. 



It is by the mines and fisheries that Cornwall is compensated for a soil too barren in 

 many parts of the country to be ever cultivated except at such an expenditure of capital 

 as no mere farmer can afford. From the inexhaustible treasures in the earth, and from 

 the equally inexhaustible shoals of pilchards which annually visit the coast, the working 

 population of Cornwall derived their regular means of support where agriculture would fail 

 them. At the mines the regular rate of wages is from forty to fifty shillings a month ; but 

 miners have opportunities of making more than this. By what is termed working "on 

 tribute/' that is, agreeing to excavate the mineral lodes for a percentage on the value of the 

 metal they raise, some of them have been known to make as much as six and even ten pounds 

 a month. Even when they are unlucky in their working speculations, or perhaps thrown out 

 of employment altogether by the shutting up of a mine, they have a fair opportunity of 



