104'

“II-[‘1' OI' IGO'I‘MID.

Frees Cobbsu’s Register of Saturday. Cobbett’s Advice to the Chopsticksot Kent, "Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dor. setshire, Berkshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and all of the other Counties in the South of

England.

Edinburgh, Oct. 14, 1832.

My Friends,—Th is is the finest city that ever Isaw in my life, thOugh it is about five hundred miles to the north of the southern part of DorsetIhire; but neither the beauty of m. city nor ts distance from your and my home has made me forget you, and particu. larly poor Cook and Farmer Boys, and the men that were transported, in 1830.

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This city is fifty-six miles from the river Tweed, which separates England from Scot- land. Ihave come through the country in a post chaise, stopped one night upon the road, and have made every inquiry, in order to ascertain the exact state of the labourers on the land. With the exception of about seven miles the land is the finest I ever saw in my life, though I have seen every fine vale in every county in England; and in the United States of America I never saw any land a tenth part so good. You will know what the land is when I tell you that it is by no means uncommon for it to produce seven English quarters of wheat upon one English acre, and forty tons of turnips upon one English acre; and that there are, almost in every half mile. from fifty to a hundred acres of turnips in one piece, sometimes white turnips and sometimes Sv’vedes, all in rows as straght as a line, and without a weed ever to be seen in any of these beautiful fields.

Oh! how you will wish to be here ! “Lord,” you will say to yourselves, “ what pretty vil- lages there must be there; nice churches and churchyards; oh! and what preciously nice aleobouses. Come, Jack, let us set off to Scot- land! What nice gardens shall we have to our cottages there! What beautiful flowers our wives will have climbing up about the win- dows, and on both sides of the path leading from the wicket up to the door! And what prancing and barking pigs we shall have, run- ning out upon the common, and what a flock of geese grazing upon the the green !

4 Stop! stop! I have not come to listen to you, but to make you listen to me; let me tell you, then, that there is neither village, nor church, ,nor ale-house, nor garden, nor cottage, nor flowers, nor pig, nor goose, nor common, nor green'; but the thing is thusz—l. The farms bf a whole country are, generally speaking, the preps-t; ofone lord. a. They are so large, that the corn-stacks frequently amount to more than a hundred upon one farm, each getack having in it, on an average, from 16 to 10 English quarters of corn. 3. The farmer’s, house is a house big enough and fine enough foragentlemen to live’in: the farm-yard is a square, with buildings on one side of it for

THE BRITISH AMERICAN .

horses, cattle, and implements; the stack.yard is on one side of this, the stacks all in rows, and the place as bigas alittle town. 4. On the side of the farm yard next to the stack yard there is a place to thrash the corn in; and there is close by this always a thrashing machine, somtimes by steam; there being no such thing as a barn or a fiail in the whole country.

‘- Well,” say you, “ but out of such quantity ofeorn and of beef and of mutton; there must some come to the share of the chopsticks, to be sure! Don't be loo sure yet; but hold your tongue, and hear my story.—The single labour- ers are kept in this manner; about four of them are put into a shed,'quite away from the farm- house and out of the farm yard; which shed, Dr. Jameison calls a “ boothie,” a place, he says, where labouring servants are lodged. A boothie means a little boothe, and here these men live and sleep. having a certain allow- ance of oat, barley, and pea meal, upon which they live, mixing it with water, or with milk when they are allowed the use of a cow, which they have to milk themselves They are al. lowed some little matter of money besides to buy clothes with; but never dream of being allowed to set their foot within the walls of the farm house. They hire for the year, under very severe punishment in case of mis- behaviour or quitting service, and cannot have fresh service, without a character from the last master, and also acharacter from the minis' ter of the parish! V

Prett‘y well, that, for a knife and fork chop- stick of Sussex, who has been used to sit round the fire with the master and mistress, and to pull about and tickle the laughing maids! Pretty well, that ! But it is the life of the married labourer that will delight you. Upon a steam-engine farm there are eight or ten of these. There is, at a considerable distance

from the farm yard, a sort of barrack erected 'for these to live in.

It is a long shed, stone walls and pantile roof and divided intoa cer- tain number of boothies, each having a door and one little window, all the doors beingon one side of the shed, and there being no back doors, and as to a privy, no such thing for them ap- pears'ever to be thought of. The ground in front of the shed, is wide or narrow, according to the circumstances but quite smooth, merely a place to walk upon. Each distinct boothie is about seventeen feet one way, and fifteen feet the other way, as nearly as my eye could determine. There is no ceiling, and no floor but the earth. In this place a man and his wife'and family have to live. When they go into it the is nothing but the four bare walls, and the tiles over their heads, and a small fire place. To make the most of the room, they, at their own cost, erect berths, like those in a barrack room, which they get up into when they go to bed; and here they are, the man. his wife, anda parcel of chlidren squeezed up in this miserable hole, with their meal, and their washing tackle, and all their other

things; and yet it is quite surprising to behold

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how decent the women endeavour to In. ', place. These women (for lfound all the in", out at work) appeared to be most industriou creatures, to be extremely obliging, and o, gooddispesitionund the shame is thatth. are permitted to enjoy so small a portion sub, fruit of all their labors, of all their cares.

Butif their dwelling place is had, their to.” is worse, being fed upon exactly that which in feed hogs and horses upon. The married m. receives in money about four pounds for 11.. whole year; and he has besides sixty bushsb of cats, thirty bushels of barley, twelve bushels of pease, with ground allowed him to plug the potatoes. The master gives him the kg. of a cow for the year round; but he must find the cow himself. He pays for his own fuel; he must find a woman to reap for twenty whoh days in the harvest, as payment for the rent of his boothie; he has no wheat; the my altogether amounts to about six pounds for every day in the year; the oatmeal is eaten in poridge, the barley-meal and pea-meal an mixed together, and baked into a sort of cakes upon an iron plate put over the fire; they sometimes get a pig and feed it upon an potatoes

Thus they never have one bit of wheaten bread or wheaten flour, nor of beef nor nut. too, though the land is covered with wheat and with cattle. The hiring for ayear,bs. ginning the 26th of May, and not at Michael. mas; the farmer takes the man just at the us- son toget the sweat out of him; and ifhe die,be dies when the main work is done. The labor- rer is wholly at the mercy of the master, who, if he will not keep him beyond the year,cen totally ruin him, by refusing him a character. The cow is a thing more in name than reality; she may be about to calve when the 26th at May comes; the wife may be in a situatios to make removal perilous to her life. This family has no home; and no home can any nus be said to have who can thus be dislodge! every year at the will of a master. It very frequently happens that the poor creatures an compelled to sell their cow for next to no- thing, and, indeed the necessity of charactu from the last employer, makes the man a ml slave, worse 05 than the negro by many I10; grees, for here there is neither law to email him relief, nor motive in the master to attend“ his health or to preserve his life.

There, chopsticks of Sussex, you can u see what English scoundrels, calling the!!- selves ‘gentlemen,’ get Scotch bailiff! M These bailifi‘s are generally the sons of of those farmers, recommended to the grindi rudiansof England by the grinding rufiians Scotland. Six days, from daylight to these good, and laborious and patient I kind people, labour. On an average have six English miles, to go to any Ch“, Here are 13 miles to walk on the Sunday. the consequence is, that‘ they very 061d” But, say you, Whatdo they do with all thew and with all' the beef and all the in