270 APPENDIX. 



certain it is that the minister's man has now very 

 generally dwindled to a boy. It may be however that 

 a better economy, without supposing either a rise 

 or fall in the rank of either, may account for the 

 change. Descending from feudal times, when ser- 

 vants did nothing but kill and steal as they were 

 bid, we find their wicked and in the long run un- 

 gainful employments substituted by a system of 

 field labour, which for a long period had indeed its 

 busy seasons those of sowing and reaping, of col- 

 lecting hay and fuel with comparative idleness all 

 the rest of the year. But now the dead of winter 

 has less of leisure that the stirring summer had 

 then; and the farm more like a factory, finds work 

 for all hands at all times. The fields, it is true, dif- 

 fer from the factory as to the matter of a roof for 

 shelter; but the genius of the farmer compensates 

 the deficiency by suiting the work to the weather; 

 and the gleeful toil goes on as steady as in a house 

 full of spindles and cards. Such an arrangement, 

 if it do not cheapen provisions, must raise the rent 

 of land as well as the labourer's hire; and hence, 

 as an idle day is now rare upon the farm, so an 

 idle man, whether about the farm or the manse, 

 becomes a nuisance to be no longer tolerated. 



O 



But a man with a pair of horses is equal to the 

 task of cultivating seventy or eighty acres, whereas 

 the glebe, consisting only of twelve, may have nine 

 under the plough; and whilst the expence of such 

 an equipment cannot be less than seventy or eighty 

 pounds per armum, the whole proceeds of the glebe 



