to whom other Employment should be given. 121 



To effect so desirable an alteration a total 

 change must be induced in the habits and pre- 

 judices of the laboring people, whose pride, 

 it is much to be feared, would greatly militate 

 against any reform that should dispossess them, 

 as the wretched occupants, of their miserable 

 holdings, and give them the happiness and inde- 

 pendency of comfortable laborers; it would, 

 in their estimation, be a depression in the scale 

 of society that no future prospects or anticipa- 

 tions of good would be capable of reconciling 

 to them. The multitudes now spreading over 

 the face of the country should, by manu- 

 factories and trade, be seduced, as it were, into 

 towns ; where new habits would be acquired, 

 and the increase of wages would create a desire 

 for better food and its natural accompaniments. 

 The potatoe, which, in some points of view, 

 may justly be regarded as one of the greatest 

 blessings to our species, is capable of operating 

 the greatest calamities, when it exclusively 

 furnishes the food on which a community is 

 content to exist; for as the cultivation of a 

 single statute acre may successfully and easily 

 be attended to by one individual, and as its 

 produce on an average would give food for at 

 least ten persons the year round, at seven 

 pounds each per day, which may be considered 

 as an abundant allowance ; what chance is 



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