LABOURING POOR. 25 



treated in this manner ; and when they are, they work much 

 greater improvements than common among thefe Germans ; 

 witnefs Sir William Ofborne's mountaineers ! a few beneficial 

 practices were introduced, but never travelled beyond their 

 own farms ; they were viewed with eyes too envious to allow 

 them to be patterns, and it was human nature that it fliould be 

 fo : but encourage a few of your own poor, and if their prac- 

 tices thrive they will fpread. I am convinced no country, 

 whatever ftate it may be in, can be improved by colonies of 

 foreigners, and whatever foreigner, as a fuperintendant of any 

 great improvement, afks for colonies of his own countrymen 

 to execute his ideas, manifefts a mean genius and but little 

 knowledge of the human heart ; if he has talents he will find 

 tools wherever he finds men, and make the natives of the 

 country the means of encreafing their own happinefs. Whate- 

 ver he does then, will live and take root ; but if effected by 

 foreign hands, it will prove a fickly and ftiort lived exotic ; 

 brilliant peihaps, for a time, in the eyes of the ignorant, but 

 of no folid advantage to the country that employs him. 



SECTION VI. 



Of the Labouring Pt/or. 



SUCH is the weight of the lower clafles in the great fcale 

 of national importance, that a traveller can never give too 

 much attention to every circumftance that concerns them ; 

 their welfare forms the broad bafis of public profperity ; it is 

 they that feed, cloath, enrich, and fight the battles of all the 

 other ranks of a community ; it is their being able to fupport 

 thefe various burthens without opprefiion, which conftitutes 

 the general felicity ; in proportion to their eafe is the ftrength 

 and wealth of nations, as public debility will be the certain 

 attendant on their mifery. Convinced that to be ignorant of 

 their ftate and fituation, in different countries, is to be defi- 

 cient in the firft rudiments of political knowledge. I have 

 upon every occafion, made the neceffary enquiries, to get the 

 beft information circumftances would allow me. What paffes 

 daily, and even hourly, before our eyes, we are very apt 

 entirely to overlook ; hence the furprizing inattention of va- 

 rious people to the food, clcathing, pofleflions and ftate of the 

 poor, even in their own neighbourhood ; many a queftion 

 have I put to gentlemen upon thele points, which were not an- 

 fwered without having recourfe to the next cabbin ; a fource 

 of information the more neceffary, as Hound upon various oc- 

 cafions, that fome gentlemen in Ireland are infevSled with the 

 rage of adopting^/frw* as well as thofe of England : with on,e 

 party the poor are all ftarving, with the other they are deemed 

 in a very tolerable fituation, and a third, who look with an 

 ev.il eye on the adminiftration of the Rritifli government, nre 

 fond, of exclaiming at poverty and rags, as proofs of the cruel 



treat-: 



