So OF EARTHS. 



would find employment for a multitude of poor, whofe families 

 would otherwife be ftarving by the precarious dependence on 

 the milch of dwarf-cows, horfes, and fheep, lean and hunger- 

 flarved, ranging in fvvarms on the waftes. Let the rocky hills 

 of Brifsley near Almvick, of Rothcley, of Camboe, and the grounds 

 about Wallington, be teftimonies of the felicity and fmiles of the 

 poor employed in planting them, and making roads ; comfort- 

 ably fed and cloathed ! Let the divided commons of Hexhamjhire, 

 of Shildcn, of Simenbum, and feveral waftes by the military road, 

 be remembered, and paralleled with the common and townfliip 

 of Wark upon North Tyne *, for inftance, and with the large one 

 above Bellingham, and its neighbouring town (hips. In the for- 

 mer, agriculture exalts her head j the plowmen, jolly, rofy, and 

 robuft ; foine of them in as happy a flate as the famed Coritius, 

 defcribed by the excellent Mantuan in his fyftem of hufbandry f. 

 In the latter are all the marks of beggary and want, meagre 

 faces, empty cupboards, whole families of both fexes, and of 

 all ages, taking their weekly, monthly, and quarterly circuits, 

 and levying contributions by alms on their happier neighbours ; 

 multitudes of them wandering, not from inclination, but called 

 abroad by hunger and pinching neceffity. 



This is the real ftate of our improved and unimproved com- 

 mons. Who that loves his country, and is moved at the profpeft 

 of fo much wretchednefs ; who that prefers plenty to poverty, 

 pleafureto diftrefs, a fociety to a defert, would not give his voice 

 for a general inclofure and diftindtion of this vague property, and 

 refcue it from fo much wretchednefs ? We fliould prefently fee 

 a fort of new creation, new towns, a new people, bufy and in- 

 .duftrious, well cloathed, well fed, enough for the culture of rural 



* Since divided. f Virg. Geo. 



and 



