LETTER VIII. 89 



happy days had all their well-earned enjoyments around 

 them, and why should they not ? Are tradesmen and 

 shopkeepers alone to have their days and hours of re- 

 creation, and farmers, forsooth, who work as hard, or 

 harder than any, to be always plodding and working at 

 the plough tail ? Forbid it common justice ! I like to 

 see the cultivator of the soil mounted on a good horse, 

 and taking his day's amusement, which are not many in 

 a season; but what are the remarks which often unjustly 

 assail them ? " Look at your tenant, Mr. So-and-so ; he 

 is mounted on as good a horse as yourself; times must 

 be good, or his rent too low." 



Who ever heard of a farmer, however, becoming a 

 millionaire by farming, or saw one sitting in the House 

 of Commons ? But from every other trade there are re- 

 presentatives in that house. Builders, bakers, tinkers, 

 and tailors, cotton spinners, brokers, railway jobbers — 

 not Jews yet, nor Turks, but infidels and heretics enough, 

 and why not farmers ? *' Oh, they are represented by 

 the landlords, are they?" The next election will, I 

 think, tell a different story. I hope to see some of my 

 friends, the farmers, representing their own body ; and I 

 will engage they can give as good an opinion on most 

 matters as many honourable members who are now 

 guiding the destinies of this once great country. There 

 are hundreds of clever men out of this great body of 

 agriculturists whose diffidence alone has hitherto kept 

 them in the back ground. They are not the stone- 

 hearted brutes which their enemies would have the 

 w^orld believe them ; nor would they, taking them as a 

 body, feed upon the vitals of the poor to make themselves 

 rich. 



Can the pretending and canting philanthropists of the 



