. the labouring man has over his rich tyranny and corruption, the canting neighbour. The latter has diet and wretches, called Methodist teachers, drink and fuel and clothing and bed-appear to me to be the worst. These ding, which the former would not look are the true blasphemers; for they at with longing eyes if he knew the represent the Almighty as willing and cares and anxieties with which they even wishing the people should live in are attended. What would the lord or a half-starving state; that they should the squire, sitting in his carpetted be fed upon garbage or potatoes; and room, and half a score dishes before that this is conducive to their eternal him, give for that appetite with which salvation. Read that Bible, my friends, the ploughman eats his bread and about which these canting hypocrites cheese, curled up under the shelter of talk so much; read it; only read it, a hedge, or with which, sitting on his and you will find that, from one end to brick floor, he eats the bit of bacon and the other, the promise of good living is pudding after his return, dividing the made to those who shall do well, and last mouthful with his children! And, the threat of hunger to those who shall oh! what would either of them give, do ill. You will find the precept, that when getting into his bed of down, for those who will not work shall not eat. that sleep which the labourer enjoys You will find a long string of bitter when he tumbles down upon his bed, or curses on those who defraud the laupon a bench, too weary to pull off his bourer of his hire. You will find that clothes. We must set one thing even the ox is not to be muzzled as he against the other. The labourer knows treadeth out the corn. You will find that nothing of the curse of ambition; he the labourer, when he has discharged has nobody to grudge him his earn- his task, is not to be sent away emptyings; there is no hellish envy at work handed, but is to receive freely, from to calumniate him, pull him down, or the granary, the flock, and the winesupplant him. His children, destined press of the master. And yet, in the to tread the same path which he has face of all this, these canting Methodist trodden, he has always with him or ruffians, well crammed with meat and near him. I have always remarked ale themselves, preach to the people that the labouring people are the most that, to live upon potatoes, or to lie affectionate parents and children; and, down and die quietly with starvation, is if there were no more than this, this a mark of grace, and a sure means of sealone is more than an over-balance for curing eternal salvation. Of all the tools all the advantages that riches and high of the boroughmongers, these have been life can bestow. For my own part, the most choice. For forty years they though enjoying all the blessings that were labouring to induce the labouring constant sobriety, resolute abstinence, people of England to live upon potaand consequent uninterrupted health toes; while they, by defrauding them can give, I have often, after very of a part of the few pennies that they serious reflection upon the matter, got, were living in luxury. come to the determination that I should Far from me to inculcate content have been still happier than I have with potatoes in exchange for hard labeen, though I have been a very happy bour. Such labour merits a sufficiency man, if I had remained (with a just of bread, of meat, of beer, good fuel, and sufficient reward for my labour) a good clothing, good lodging; and if labouring man all the days of my life. the man who labours honestly and truly, But, though I thus preach content, at whatever sort of work, do not obtain far from me the villanous thought of a sufficiency of these for himself and recommending to those who labour his family too, I despise him for being truly and honestly to be content without content; I despise him for being quiet; receiving a sufficiency of food and of I despise him for lying down and raiment for their labour. And, of all starving with the hope of salvation for the detestable villains ever fostered by his reward. Such a man is a worm, TO LABOURERS FOR RAISING COBBETT'S CORN. made to be devoured by the fowls of pot-boiling potatoes, which, as you well the air, or to be trodden on and know, makes a sort of stuff that boils squeezed to death. For many, many half away in the pot, and the remainder years, and especially since the Union of which is only fit to grease wheels with Ireland, endeavours have been with. I am going to tell you how to making to induce the English labourers get bacon as solid and as sweet as that to live upon potatoes. Had it not been fatted upon 'barley-meal, and that, too, for that accursed, that soul-degrading, without going to either farmer or miller; that man-enslaving root, the people of that is to say, if you have from ten to Ireland never could have been brought twenty rods of ground, and will strictly to their present miserable state. manner of means have been resorted to INSTRUCTIONS All follow my directions. to bring the English to their present miserable state. I thank God Almighty the attempts, have failed; and I do not I WILL first describe this corn to you. know that I ever experienced more It is that which, is sometimes called pleasure in all my life than I did upon Indian Corn; and sometimes people finding that the working people in the call it Indian wheat. It is that sort of bunch of little flinty parishes in Hamp- corn which the disciples ate as they shire now get a sufficiency of bacon and were going up to Jerusalem on the bread. The whole of my journey into Sabbath day. They gathered it in the Hampshire, all the circumstances con- fields as they went along, and ate it sidered, was the pleasantest I ever took green, they being "an hungered," for in my life. The havoc made in those which, you know, they were reproved parishes amongst the labourers, has been by the Pharisees, I have written dreadful; the victims have been nume- treatise on this corn, in a book which I rous; but those who remain have bacon sell for two-and-sixpence, giving a miand bread and beer; and never will nute account of the qualities, the culture, they again go to the fields with cold the harvesting, and of the various uses potatoes in their satchells. Mr. DE- of this corn; but I shall here confine DAMS, shoemaker, of Sutton Scotney, myself to what is necessary for a latold me that the labourers were well bourer to know about it, so that he may off and contented; that the farmers be induced to raise, and may be enabled adhered faithfully to their promises, to raise, enough of it in his garden to and that harmony reigned in the villages fat a pig of ten score. such as he had never known before. "Do they get bacon and bread," said I; and when he told me that they did, I said, "That is enough." Now, my friends, this bacon being the standard with me, I am about to give you instructions how to get more bacon than you would be able to get without those instructions. I am not conceited enough to think that I can ell you any-thing useful concerning hose things which you have been accustomed to from your infancy; but I am going to tell you about something hat you cannot know any-thing about. am going to tell you how to get the means of fatting a pig of ten score vithout peas, beans, barley, or oats. God forgive you, if you think that I am going to recommend the everlasting There are a great many sorts of this corn. They all come from countries which are hotter than England. This sort, which my eldest son brought into England, is a dwarf kind, and is the only kind that I have known to ripen in this country; and I know that it will ripen in this country in any sume mer; for, I had a large field of it in. 1828 and 1829; and last year (my lease at my farm being out at Michael mas, and this corn not ripening till late in October) I had about two acres in my garden at Kensington. Within the memory of man there have not been three summers so cold as the last, one after another; and not one so cold as the last. Yet my corn ripened perfectly well, and this, you will be sa tisfied of if you be amongst the men to way. n whom this corn is given from me. You pleasure. The finest and most solid will see that it is in the shape of the bacon in the world is produced in this coneniofra spruce fir, you will see that the grains are fixed round a stalk which is called the cob. These stalks or ears come soute of thebside of the plant, which has leaves like a flag, which plant grows to about three feet high, and has two or three and sometimes more of these scars or branches of grain. Out of the top of the plant comes the tassel, which resembles the plumes of feathers upon a hearse, and this is the flower of the plant. The grain is, as you will see, about the size of a large pea, and there are from two to three hundred of these grains upon the ear, or cob. In my treatise I have shown that, in Ame rica, all the hogs and pigs, all the poultry of every sort, the greater part of the oxen, and a considerable part of the sheep, are fatted upon this corn; that it is the best food for horses; and that, when ground and dressed in various ways, it is used in bread, in puddings, in several other ways in families; and that, in short it is the real staff of life, in all the countries where it is in common culture, and where the climate is hot. When used for poultry, the grain is rubbed off the cob. Horses, sheep and pigs, bite the grain off and leave the cob; but horned cattle eat cob and all. I am to speak of it to you, however, only as a thing to make you some bacon, for which use it surpasses all other grain whatsoever. When the grain is in the whole ear, it is called corn in the eur; when it is rubbed off the cob, it is called shelled corn. Now, observe, ten bushels of shelled corn are equal, in the fatting of a pig, to fifteen bushels of barley; and fifteen bushels of barley, if property ground and managed, will make u pig of ten score, if he be not too poor when you begin to fat him. Observe that every body who has been in America knows, that the finest hogs in the world are fatted in that country; and no man ever saw a hog fatted in that country in any other way than tossing the ears of corn over to him in the sty, leaving him to bite it off the ear, and deal with it according to his Now, then, I know that a bushel of shelled corn may be grown upon one single rood of ground, sixteen feet and a half each way. I have grown more than that, this last summer; and any you may do the same if you will I strictly follow the instructions which I am now about to give you, of Late in March (I am doing it now), or in the first fortnight of April, dig your ground up very deep, and let it lie rough till between the seventh and fifteenth of May. 2. Then, in dry weather, if possible, dig up the ground again and make it smooth at top; draw drills with a line two feet apart, just as you do drills for peas; rub the grains off the cob; put a little very rotten and fine manure along the bottom of the drill; lay the grains along upon that, six inches apart; cover the grain over with fine earth, so that there be about an inch and a half on the top of the grain; pat, the earth down a little with the back of a hoe, to make it lie solid on the grain... 8. If there be any danger of slugs, you must kill them before the corn comes up, if possible; and the best way to do this is to put a little hot lime in a bag, and go very early in the morning, and shake the bag all round the edges of the ground and over the ground. Doing this three or four times very early in a dewy morning, or just after a shower, will destroy all the slugs; and this ought to be done for all other crops as well as for that of corn bet 4. When the corn comes up, you must take care to keep all birds off till it is two or three inches high; for the spear is so sweet that the birds of all sorts are very apt to peck it off, particularly the doves and the larks and pigeons. As soon as it is fairly above ground, give the whole of the ground (inc dry weather) a flat hoeing, and be sure to move all the ground close round the plants. When the weeds begin to appear again, give the ground another hoeing, but always in dry weather. When the plants get to be about a foot high, or a little more, dig the ground between the rows, and work the earth up a little against the stems of the plants. have two fiitches of bacon, two pigs' cheeks, one set of souse, two griskins, two spare-ribs, from both which I trust in Gods you will keep the jaws of the Methodist parson; and if, while you are drinking a mug of your own ale, after having dined upon one of these, you drink my health, you may be sure that it will give you more merit in the sight of God, as well as of man, than you would acquire by groaning the soul out of your body in responses to the Methodist thief that would persuade you to live upon potatoes. 5. About the middle of August you will see the tassel springing up out of the middle of the plant, and the ears coming out of the sides. If weeds appear in the ground hoe it again, to kill the weeds, so that the ground may be always kept clean. About the middle of September you find the grains of the ears to be full of milk, just in the state blasphemous cant of the sleek-headed that the ears were at Jerusalem when the disciples cropped them to eat. From this milky state they, like the grains of wheat, grow hard; and as soon as the grains begin to be hard, you should cut off the tops of the corn and the long flaggy leaves, and leave the ears to ripen upon the stalk or stem. If it be a warm summer, they will be fit to harvest by the last of October; but it does not signify if they remain out until the middle of November, or even later. The longer they stay out, the harder the grain will be. 6. Each ear is covered in a very curious manner with a husk. The best way for you will be, when you gather in your crop, to strip off the husks, to tie the ears in bunches of six or eight or ten, and to hang them up to nails in the walls, or against the beams of your house; for there is so much moisture in the cob, that the ears are apt to heat if put together in great parcels. The room in which I write in London is now hung all round with bunches of this corn. The bunches may he hung up in a shed or stable for a while, and, when perfectly dry, they may be put into bags.or 2 7. Now, as to the mode of using the corn; if for poultry you must rub the grains off the cob; but if for pigs, give them the whole ears. You will find some of the ears in which the grain is still soft. Give these to your pig first; and keep the hardest to the last. You will soon see how much the pig will require in a day; because pigs, more decent than many rich men, never eat any more than is necessary to them You will thus have rapig you will A You must be quite sensible that I cannot have any motive but your good in giving you this advice, other than the delight which I take in, and the pleasure which I derive from, doing that good. You are all personally unknown to me in all human probability, not one man in a thousand will ever see me. You have no more power to show your gratitude to me than you have to cause me to live for a hundred years. I do not desire that you should deem this a favour received from me. The thing is worth your trying, at any rate, too I am now preparing bags of ears of this corn to be sent to the following gen tlemen, in number as stated against their names respectively. I request them to give them to such labouring men as they may choose, and to each labouring man a copy of "Two-PENNY TRASH," No. X., along with the Indian Corn. To Mr. DEDAMS; of Sutton Scotney, I have to make this request, namely, that if I do not send him enough for the labourers of that little bunch of hard parishes, he will writes to me for more; for I have a particular desire to show my regard for these parishes. I was once going on horseback across the country, through the villages from Winchester: to Burghclere, and they having dis-í pleased me at the inn at Winchester, Li had gone off, I and my little boyy with out breakfast; when I came to Stoke Charity, I was in the true English mood of hunger and anger, and had just spoken in such an angry tone to him. that lowas ashamed of myself the mod? mentafter. Going by a labourer's house 1 Twopenny 30 (1) 65.. BERKSHIRE. WILLIAM BUDD, Esq., Newbury. BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. ER Rev. A. D. MORRICE, Great Brickhill. CAMBRIDGESHIRE, Mr. N. WALKER, Wisbeach... ESSEX. 譬 OSBORNE BUTCHER, Esq., Malden. Mr. ILES, Fairford. HAMPSHIRE. Mr. BIGWOOD, No. 40, Queen-street, Portsea, of Wight. in the outskirts of the village, I asked served, with No. X. of " The following is the list of the gentlemen to whom I, agreeably to the promise contained in my Register of the 19th of March, shall send parcels of the corn, accompanied, as before ob dover. Mr. Exos DEDAMS, Sutton Scotney, Win- Mr. WILLIAM TOLLER, St. Neots. HUNTINGDONSHIRE. ΚΕΝΤ. Mr. FISH, Brewer, Earl's street, Maidstone... LINCOLNSHIRE. Mr. SNAITH, Surgeon, Boston. NORFOLK. SIR THOMAS BEEVOR, Bart., Hargham. |