103 



the hauteur, and rudeness of oflSce ; and seeing I was not 

 likely to obtain attention, after waiting- a long time, I re- 

 quested my friend Sir George Hill to call on Mr. Slade 

 for my memoir, that I might bring my sentiments on the 

 improvement of my country before the Public through 

 some other channel, that which I had chosen as a desirable 

 one being shut up by the Secretary of the Society. Sir 

 George's application failed. I then spoke to Mr. Slade 

 personallijy requesting my manuscript might be returned 

 to me, as I had not a copy. Mr. Slade promised it should, 

 but I heard no more of it. 



Though my whole manuscript seems irrecoverable, I 

 found one sheet among my loose papers, where it had lain 

 three or four years. I shall quote it as it stood : 



" The question then I have taken the liberty to bring 

 ** before your respectable Corporations is — Are these 

 " 3750 acres, as formerly, to be added to our national field 

 " of barrenness and deformity ? or are they, by exertion 

 " and attention, without expense, to be thrown into a style 

 " of great beauty and high profit, adding every year to our 

 " most valuable lands, and fully equal to any of them V 



I then detail the measures to be recommended to, and en- 

 forced upon the turf-cutters, in their annual proceedings ; 

 by which the portions contained in the County of Derry, 

 of the 3750 acres cut out annually in all Ireland, wilj 

 be reclaimed, and made profitable in regular course. 



I next call the attention of the London Corporations 

 to the wide field of desolation, the result of indolence and 

 neglect accumulated for centuries ; ,and I encourage them 

 to encounter it. I tell them, " There is a mighty agent, 

 " whom it has been the fashion to threaten to rouse into 

 " action upon any emergency, the mass of the people. 



" Buonaparte talked of the thirty or forty millions. 



