494 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



ing come from America was mentioned, and who had sons in the 

 new world, brightened up with a strange joy at seeing one from a 

 land where her heart had evidently been of late more busy than at 

 home. " It was a good country," she said ; " her sons had bought 

 land, and were doing famous." For a working man to own land, 

 in a country like this, where the farmers are almost all only tenants 

 of the few great proprietors, is to their minds something like hold- 

 ing a fee-simple to part of paradise. 



The morning yesterday was spent on horseback in examining the 

 agriculture of the estate. The rich harvest-fields, extending over the 

 broad Cambridgeshire plains, afford, at this season, a fine picture of 

 the great productiveness of England. About a thousand acres are 

 farmed by Lord H., and the rest let to tenants. I was glad to hear 

 from him that he has endeavored, with great success, to abolish the 

 enormous consumption of malt liquor among laborers of all classes 

 here, by giving them only a very small allowance joined to a sum 

 equal to the largest allowance on other estates, in the shape of an 

 addition to their wages. He confirmed my previous impressions of 

 the bad effects produced by this monstrous guzzling of beer by the 

 working men of England ; a consumption actually astounding to one 

 accustomed to the abstinent and equally hard working farmers of the 

 United States.* 



Farming, here, is a vastly more scientific and carefully studied 

 occupation than with us ; and the attention bestowed upon landed 

 estates, (many of which yield a revenue of $50,000 or $60,000 a 

 year, and some much more,) is, as you may suppose, one of no tri- 

 fling moment. Hence the knowledge of practical agriculture, by 

 the owners of many of these vast English estates, is of a very high 

 order ; and I am glad, from considerable observation, to say that 

 the relations between owner and tenant are often of the most con- 

 siderate and liberal kind. No doubt the present free trade prices 



* At the celebrated farm of Mr. W., in this county, his cellar contained, 

 at the commencement of harvest, twenty-four hogsheads of beer; barely 

 enough, as I was told, for the harvest labor about nine pints per day to 

 each man. There was nearly a strike among the workmen for ten pints ; 

 indeed, a gallon per day is no very uncommon thing for a beer drinker ic 

 England ! 



