OBSERVATIONS ON FOX-HUNTING 89 



cannot resist saying a word or two in behalf of 

 my friends, the farmers, arising from the experi- 

 ence I have had in France. I am fully convinced 

 if the ports were open at home, it would be a 

 great hardship upon them ; for they cannot pos- 

 sibly afford to sell their grain at so Ioav a price 

 as the growers on the Continent can export it. 

 The latter have so great an advantage in having 

 neither poor-rates or tythes to pay. I have read, 

 among the advertisements in the English papers, 

 of farms to be let tythe-free, but never remember 

 having met with one that was exemjJt from poor- 

 rates. 



Another great advantage a farmer has on some 

 parts of the Continent over the agricultvu'ist here 

 is that the land is divided into small farms, 

 seldom exceeding one hundred acres, and the 

 greatest part of them are under fifty ; a farmer 

 and his family will therefore almost have it in 

 their power to cultivate the land without hiring 

 labourers. Supposing he has a wife, three sons, 

 and two daughters, and rents a farm of fifty 

 acres, the females will do as much hard work 

 out of doors as the men, and the whole of the 

 business will thus be carried on by the family, 

 except threshing out the corn, which they think 

 beneath them. And their manner of living too 

 is so different to that of our yeomanry, that the 



