306 



A DISCOURSE 



2. 



More plenty of mutton and beef. 



Corn, butter, and cheese of the best. 

 More wealth any where, (to be brief,) 



IMore people, more handsome, and prest, . 

 Where find ye (go search any coast) 

 Than there where inclosure is most ? 



3. 



More work for the labouring man. 



As well in the town as the field ; 

 Or therefore (devise, if ye can) 



More profit what countries do yield ? 

 More seldom where see ye the poor 

 Go begging from door to door ? 



4. 



In WOODLAND, the poor men that have 



Scarce fully two acres of land. 

 More merrily live, and do save. 



Than t'other with twenty in hand : 

 Yet pay they as much for the two 

 As t'other for twenty must do. 

 If this same be true, as it is. 

 Why gather they nothing by this ? 



Thus honest Tusser, above an hundred years since, and the whole age 

 has justified it ; since it is evident, that by inclosure, and this diligent 

 culture, the very worst land of England would yield tenfold more profit, 

 than that which is here celebrated for the best and richest spot of it. 



Such as are ready to tell you their lands are so wet that their woods do 

 not thrive in them, let them be converted to pasture, or bestow the same 

 industry on them which good husbands do on meadows by draining ; 

 which, instead of those narrow rills, (gutters rather,) might be reduced to 

 a proportionable canal, cut even and straight, the earth taken out and 

 spread upon the weeping and uliginous places ; nor would the charge 

 be so much as that of the yearly and perpetual renewing and cleansing 

 of those numerous and irregular sluices ; besides, there is a profit in 

 storing the canal with fish. 



BOOK in. 



It is a slothfulness to do otherwise, since it might be effected in few 

 years, by continually, and by degrees making the middle cut large, where 



