306 Visit Dr. Beaufort. 



upper classes for the employment of the super- 

 abundant population ; and the reprehensible love 

 of ease, and the apathy, which prevail among the 

 lower orders. These, augmented by the want of 

 appropriate services for single persons, and the 

 numerous obstacles to their search for occupa- 

 tions from home, unceasingly augment the 

 population, and render the condition of all more 

 desperate. Westmoreland, where the landed 

 property is more divided than in any county in 

 England, and where the respectability and 

 comfort of the inhabitants are unequalled, 

 would long ago have been in the same situation 

 with Ireland, had not her hardy and industrious 

 sons sought independency, far from their native 

 soil, by their own virtuous exertions. 



We visited Dr. Beaufort, who, on a small 

 scale, is an excellent farmer. His mode of 

 cultivating potatoes on wide stitches, and by 

 frequently earthing them up, corresponds in a 

 great measure with the practice on my own 

 farm ; the produce, by these means, is greatly 

 increased, and the quality of the potatoe much 

 improved by being kept dry, which is seldom 

 the case in the old-fashioned culture in lazy 

 beds. Dr. Beaufort had recently reaped fifty 

 stooks of wheat, ten sheaves to the stook, from 



