xxxviii Notices for a Young Farmer, 



Against keeping an unreasonable number of sheep, there 

 have been, recently, ample warnings. Such excesses, gene- 

 rally, (but, for the time, injuriously for individuals,) regulate 

 themselves. In England* extravagant speculations in sheep, 

 were checked; (as far as legislative interference could accom- 

 plish,) by laws. In the time of Henrij VIII. an act of Parlia- 

 ment recites, that some flock-holders had 24,000 sheep; and 

 it enacts, that no person shall hold more than 2000 ! Re- 

 ligious communities and characters held the largest flocks, 

 and thus depopulated the country, an d forced the labouring 

 classes into mendicity and crimes, for want of employment. 

 They drew on themselves their dissolution, and restraints 

 on their sordid propensities ; by thus affording to this arbi- 

 trary monarch, some plausible pretexts and many justifiable 

 motives, for his fatal hostility towards them. See an inter- 

 teresting Paper on the Poor, and Poor-Laws ; Bath Papers, 

 14th vol. pages 245, et seq. 



Such causes have, in no small degree, contributed to keep 

 the plough idle in Spain, and other countries where, accord- 

 ing to the quaint phraseology of an old poet, " sheepe have 

 eaten men, many a yere ;" in place of W men eating sheepe." 

 Instances, however, of excessive abuse, are no arguments 

 against breeding these highly valuable animals, in numbers 

 adequate to our prudent demands for them. 



Great flocks may be kept, in parts of our country in which 

 they would not interfere with other branches of husbandry. 

 Locality is, therefore, of primary importance. Lines of states 

 are well for jurisdictional purposes. But local prejudices are 

 injurious, on the great national scale. Mutual wants, plen- 

 teously supplied, will bind us in bands of common interests ; 

 and we shall the sooner become one people. If, in old dis- 

 tricts, cattle or sheep cannot be so advantageously raised or 

 fatted as in newly settled countries ; let us apply our efforts 

 where they are most beneficial. What liberal mind was not 

 gratified by a recent influx of prime beef-cattle, from the 

 western country ; some of them preferred, by our victuallers, 

 to those of our vicinity, after having been driven more than 

 400 miles ? The seaboard markets will thus be reduced to 



