Sir, your most obedient and
most humble Servant,
Wm. Cobbett.

223. In the last edition, this closing part of the work, relative to the straw plat, was not presented to the public as a thing which admitted of no alteration; but, on the contrary, it was presented to the public with the following concluding remark: “In conclusion I have to observe, that I by no means send forth this essay as containing opinions and instructions that are to undergo no alteration. I am, indeed, endeavouring to teach others; but I am myself only a learner. Experience will, doubtless, make me much more perfect in a knowledge of the several parts of the subject; and the fruit of this experience I shall be careful to communicate to the public.” I now proceed to make good this promise. Experience has proved that very beautiful and very fine plat can be made of the straw of divers kinds of grass. But the most ample experience has also proved to us that it is to the straw of wheat, that we are to look for a manufacture to supplant the Leghorn. This was mentioned as a strong suspicion in my former edition of this work. And I urged my readers to sow wheat for the purpose. The fact is now proved beyond all contradiction, that the straw of wheat or rye, but particularly of wheat, is the straw for this purpose. Finer plat may be made from the straw of grass than can possibly be made from the straw of wheat or rye: but the grass plat is, all of it, more or less brittle; and none of it has the beautiful and uniform colour of the straw of wheat. Since the last edition of this work, I have received packets of the straw from Tuscany, all of wheat; and, indeed, I am convinced that no other straw is any-thing like so well calculated for the purpose. Wheat straw bleaches better than any other. It has that fine, pale, golden colour which no other straw has; it is much more simple, more pliant than any other straw; and, in short, this is the material. I did not urge in vain. A good quantity of wheat was sowed for this purpose. A great deal of it has been well harvested; and I have the pleasure to know that several hundreds of persons are now employed in the platting of straw. One more year; one more crop of wheat; and another Leghorn bonnet will never be imported in England. Some great errors have been committed in the sowing of the wheat, and in the cutting of it. I shall now, therefore, availing myself of the experience which I have gained, offer to the public some observations on the sort of wheat to be sowed for this purpose; on the season for sowing; on the land to be used for the purpose; on the quantity of seed, and the manner of sowing: on the season for cutting; on the manner of cutting, bleaching, and housing; on the platting; on the knitting, and on the pressing.

224. The SORT OF WHEAT. The Leghorn plat is all made of the straw of the spring wheat. This spring wheat is so called by us, because it is sowed in the spring, at the same time that barley is sowed. The botanical name of it is TRITICUM ÆSTIVUM. It is a small-grained bearded wheat. It has very fine straw; but experience has convinced me, that the little brown-grained winter wheat is just as good for the purpose. In short, any wheat will do. I have now in my possession specimens of plat made of both winter and spring wheat, and I see no difference at all. I am decidedly of opinion that the winter wheat is as good as the spring wheat for the purpose. I have plat, and I have straw both now before me, and the above is the result of my experience.

225. THE LAND PROPER FOR THE GROWING OF WHEAT. The object is to have the straw as small as we can get it. The land must not, therefore, be too rich; yet it ought not to be very poor. If it be, you get the straw of no length. I saw an acre this year, as beautiful as possible, sowed upon a light loam, which bore last year a fine crop of potatoes. The land ought to be perfectly clean, at any rate; so that, when the crop is taken off, the wheat straw may not be mixed with weeds and grass.

226. SEASON FOR SOWING. This will be more conveniently stated in paragraph 228.

227. QUANTITY OF SEED AND MANNER OF SOWING. When first this subject was started in 1821, I said, in the Register, that I would engage to grow as fine straw in England as the Italians could grow. I recommended then, as a first guess, fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre. Since that, reflection told me that that was not quite enough. I therefore recommended twenty bushels to the acre. Upon the beautiful acre which I have mentioned above, eighteen bushels, I am told, were sowed; fine and beautiful as it was, I think it would have been better if it had had twenty bushels; twenty bushels, therefore, is what I recommend. You must sow broad cast, of course, and you must take great pains to cover the seed well. It must be a good even-handed seedsman, and there must be very nice covering.

228. SEASON FOR CUTTING. Now, mind, it is fit to cut in just about one week after the bloom has dropped. If you examine the ear at that time, you will find the grain just beginning to be formed, and that is precisely the time to cut the wheat: The straw has then got its full substance in it. But I must now point out a very material thing. It is by no means desirable to have all your wheat fit to cut at the same time. It is a great misfortune, indeed, so to have it. If fit to cut altogether, it ought to be cut all at the same time; for supposing you to have an acre, it will require a fortnight or three weeks to cut it and bleach it, unless you have a very great number of hands, and very great vessels to prepare water in. Therefore, if I were to have an acre of wheat for this, purpose, and were to sow all spring wheat, I would sow a twelfth part of the acre every week from the first week in March to the last week in May. If I relied partly upon winter wheat, I would sow some every month, from the latter end of September to March. If I employed the two sorts of wheat, or indeed if I employed only the spring wheat, the Triticum Æstivum, I should have some wheat fit to cut in June, and some not fit to cut till September. I should be sure to have a fair chance as to the weather. And, in short, it would be next to impossible for me to fail of securing a considerable part of my crop. I beg the reader’s particular attention to the contents of this paragraph.

229. MANNER OF CUTTING THE WHEAT. It is cut by a little reap-hook, close to the ground as possible. It is then tied in little sheaves, with two pieces of string, one near the butt, and the other about half-way up. This little bundle or sheaf ought to be six inches through at the butt, and no more. It ought not to be tied too tightly, lest the scalding should not be perfect.

230. MANNER OF BLEACHING. The little sheaves mentioned in the last paragraph are carried to a brewing mash, vat, or other tub. You must not put them into the tub in too large a quantity, lest the water get chilled before it get to the bottom. Pour on scalding water till you cover the whole of the little sheaves, and let the water be a foot above the top sheaves. When the sheaves have remained thus a full quarter of an hour, take them out with a prong, lay them in a clothes-basket, or upon a hurdle, and carry them to the ground where the bleaching is to be finished. This should be, if possible, a piece of grass land, where the grass is very short. Take the sheaves, and lay some of them along in a row; untie them, and lay the straw along in that row as thin as it can possibly be laid. If it were possible, no one straw ought to have another lying upon it, or across it. If the sun be clear, it will require to lie twenty-four hours thus, then to be turned, and lie twenty-four hours on the other side. If the sun be not very clear, it must lie longer. But the numerous sowings which I have mentioned will afford you so many chances, so many opportunities of having fine weather, that the risk about weather would necessarily be very small. If wet weather should come, and if your straw remain out in it any length of time, it will be spoiled; but, according to the mode of sowing above pointed out, you really could stand very little chance of losing straw by bad weather. If you had some straw out bleaching, and the weather were to appear suddenly to be about to change, the quantity that you would have out would not be large enough to prevent you from putting it under cover, and keeping it there till the weather changed.

231. HOUSING THE STRAW. When your straw is nicely bleached, gather it up, and with the same string that you used to tie it when green, tie it up again into little sheaves. Put it by in some room where there is no damp, and where mice and rats are not suffered to inhabit. Here it is always ready for use, and it will keep, I dare say, four or five years very well.

232. THE PLATTING. This is now so well understood that nothing need be said about the manner of doing the work. But much might be said about the measures to be pursued by land-owners, by parish officers, by farmers, and more especially by gentlemen and ladies of sense, public spirit, and benevolence of disposition. The thing will be done; the manufacture will spread itself all over this kingdom; but the exertions of those whom I have here pointed out might hasten the period of its being brought to perfection. And I beg such gentlemen and ladies to reflect on the vast importance of such manufacture, which it is impossible to cause to produce any-thing but good. One of the great misfortunes of England at this day is, that the land has had taken away from it those employments for its women and children which were so necessary to the well-being of the agricultural labourer. The spinning, the carding, the reeling, the knitting; these have been all taken away from the land, and given to the Lords of the Loom, the haughty lords of bands of abject slaves. But let the landholder mark how the change has operated to produce his ruin. He must have the labouring MAN and the labouring BOY; but, alas! he cannot have these, without having the man’s wife, and the boy’s mother, and little sisters and brothers. Even Nature herself says, that he shall have the wife and little children, or that he shall not have the man and the boy. But the Lords of the Loom, the crabbed-voiced, hard-favoured, hard-hearted, puffed-up, insolent, savage and bloody wretches of the North have, assisted by a blind and greedy Government, taken all the employment away from the agricultural women and children. This manufacture of Straw will form one little article of employment for these persons. It sets at defiance all the hatching and scheming of all the tyrannical wretches who cause the poor little creatures to die in their factories, heated to eighty-four degrees. There will need no inventions of Watt; none of your horse powers, nor water powers; no murdering of one set of wretches in the coal mines, to bring up the means of murdering another set of wretches in the factories, by the heat produced from those coals; none of these are wanted to carry on this manufactory. It wants no combination laws; none of the inventions of the hard-hearted wretches of the North.

233. THE KNITTING. Upon this subject, I have only to congratulate my readers that there are great numbers of English women who can now knit, plat together, better than those famous Jewesses of whom we were told.

234. THE PRESSING. Bonnets and hats are pressed after they are made. I am told that a proper press costs pretty nearly a hundred pounds; but, then, that it will do prodigious deal of business. I would recommend to our friends in the country to teach as many children as they can to make the plat. The plat will be knitted in London, and in other considerable towns, by persons to whom it will be sold. It appears to me, at least, that this will be the course that the thing will take. However, we must leave this to time; and here I conclude my observations upon a subject which is deeply interesting to myself, and which the public in general deem to be of great importance.

235. POSTSCRIPT on brewing.—I think it right to say here, that, ever since I published the instructions for brewing by copper and by wooden utensils, the beer at my own house has always been brewed precisely agreeable to the instructions contained in this book; and I have to add, that I never have had such good beer in my house in all my lifetime, as since I have followed that mode of brewing. My table-beer, as well as my ale, is always as clear as wine. I have had hundreds and hundreds of quarters of malt brewed into beer in my house. My people could always make it strong enough and sweet enough; but never, except by accident, could they make it CLEAR. Now I never have any that is not clear. And yet my utensils are all very small; and my brewers are sometimes one labouring man, and sometimes another. A man wants showing how to brew the first time. I should suppose that we use, in my house, about seven hundred gallons of beer every year, taking both sorts together; and I can positively assert, that there has not been one drop of bad beer, and indeed none which has not been most excellent, in my house, during the last two years, I think it is, since I began using the utensils, and in the manner named in this book.

ICE-HOUSES.

236. First begging the reader to read again paragraph 149, I proceed here, in compliance with numerous requests to that effect, to describe, as clearly as I can, the manner of constructing the sort of Ice-houses therein mentioned. In England, these receptacles of frozen water are, generally, under ground, and always, if possible, under the shade of trees, the opinion being, that the main thing, if not the only thing, is to keep away the heat. The heat is to be kept away certainly; but moisture is the great enemy of Ice; and how is this to be kept away either under ground, or under the shade of trees? Abundant experience has proved, that no thickness of wall, that no cement of any kind, will effectually resist moisture. Drops will, at times, be seen hanging on the under side of an arch of any thickness, and made of any materials, if it have earth over it, and even when it has the floor of a house over it; and wherever the moisture enters, the ice will quickly melt.

237. Ice-houses should therefore be, in all their parts, as dry as possible: and they should be so constructed, and the ice so deposited in them, as to ensure the running away of the meltings as quickly as possible, whenever such meltings come. Any-thing in way of drains or gutters, is too slow in its effect; and therefore there must be something that will not suffer the water proceeding from any melting, to remain an instant.

238. In the first place, then, the ice-house should stand in a place quite open to the sun and air; for whoever has travelled even but a few miles (having eyes in his head) need not be told how long that part of a road from which the sun and wind are excluded by trees, or hedges, or by any-thing else, will remain wet, or at least damp, after the rest of the road is even in a state to send up dust.

239. The next thing is to protect the ice against wet, or damp, from beneath. It should, therefore, stand on some spot from which water would run in every direction; and if the natural ground presents no such spot, it is no very great job to make it.

240. Then come the materials of which the house is to consist. These, for the reasons before-mentioned, must not be bricks, stones, mortar, nor earth; for these are all affected by the atmosphere; they will become damp at certain times, and dampness is the great destroyer of ice. The materials are wood and straw. Wood will not do; for, though not liable to become damp, it imbibes heat fast enough; and, besides, it cannot be so put together as to shut out air sufficiently. Straw is wholly free from the quality of becoming damp, except from water actually put upon it; and it can, at the same time, be placed on a roof, and on sides, to such a degree of thickness as to exclude the air in a manner the most perfect. The ice-house ought, therefore, to be made of posts, plates, rafters, laths, and straw. The best form is the circular; and the house, when made, appears as I have endeavoured to describe it in Fig. 3 of the plate.

241. Fig. 1, a, is the centre of a circle, the diameter of which is ten feet, and at this centre you put up a post to stand fifteen feet above the level of the ground, which post ought to be about nine inches through at the bottom, and not a great deal smaller at the top. Great care must be taken that this post be perfectly perpendicular; for, if it be not, the whole building will be awry.

242. b b b are fifteen posts, nine feet high, and six inches through at the bottom, without much tapering towards the top. These posts stand about two feet apart, reckoning from centre of post to centre of post, which leaves between each two a space of eighteen inches, c c c c are fifty-four posts, five feet high, and five inches through at the bottom, without much tapering towards the top. These posts stand about two feet apart, from centre of post to centre of post, which leaves between each two a space of nineteen inches. The space between these two rows of posts is four feet in width, and, as will be presently seen, is to contain a wall of straw.

243. e is a passage through this wall; d is the outside door of the passage; f is the inside door; and the inner circle, of which a is the centre, is the place in which the ice is to be deposited.

244. Well, then, we have now got the posts up; and, before we talk of the roof of the house, or of the bed for the ice, it will be best to speak about the making of the wall. It is to be made of straw, wheat-straw, or rye-straw, with no rubbish in it, and made very smooth by the hand as it is put in. You lay it in very closely and very smoothly, so that if the wall were cut across, as at g g, in Fig. 2 (which Fig. 2 represents the whole building cut down through the middle, omitting the centre post,) the ends of the straws would present a compact face as they do after a cut of a chaff-cutter. But there requires something to keep the straw from bulging out between the posts. Little stakes as big as your wrist will answer this purpose. Drive them into the ground, and fasten, at top, to the plates, of which I am now to speak. The plates are pieces of wood which go all round both the circles, and are nailed on upon the tops of the posts. Their main business is to receive and sustain the lower ends of the rafters, as at m m and n n in Fig. 2. But to the plates also the stakes just mentioned must be fastened at top. Thus, then, there will be this space of four feet wide, having, on each side of it, a row of posts and stakes, not more than about six inches from each other, to hold up, and to keep in its place, this wall of straw.

245. Next come the rafters, as from s to n, Fig. 2. Carpenters best know what is the number and what the size of the rafters; but from s to m there need be only about half as many as from m to n. However, carpenters know all about this. It is their every-day work. The roof is forty-five degrees pitch, as the carpenters call it. If it were even sharper, it would be none the worse. There will be about thirty ends of rafters to lodge on the plate, as at m; and these cannot all be fastened to the top of the centre-post rising up from a; but carpenters know how to manage this matter, so as to make all strong and safe. The plate which goes along on the tops of the row of posts, b b b, must, of course, be put on in a somewhat sloping form; otherwise there would be a sort of hip formed by the rafters. However, the thatch is to be so deep, that this may not be of much consequence. Before the thatching begins, there are laths to put upon the rafters. Thatchers know all about this, and all that you have to do is, to take care that the thatcher tie the straw on well. The best way, in a case of such deep thatch, is to have a strong man to tie for the thatcher.

246. The roof is now raftered, and it is to receive a thatch of clean, sound, and well-prepared wheat or rye straw, four feet thick, as at h h in Fig. 2.

247. The house having now got walls and roof, the next thing is to make the bed to receive the ice. This bed is the area of the circle of which a is the centre. You begin by laying on the ground round logs, eight inches through, or thereabouts, and placing them across the area, leaving spaces between them of about a foot. Then, crossways on them, poles about four inches through, placed at six inches apart. Then, crossways on them, other poles, about two inches through, placed at three inches apart. Then, crossways on them, rods as thick as your finger, placed at an inch apart. Then upon these, small, clean, dry, last-winter-cut twigs, to the thickness of about two inches; or, instead of these twigs, good, clean, strong heath, free from grass and moss, and from rubbish of all sorts.

248. This is the bed for the ice to lie on; and as you see, the top of the bed will be seventeen inches from the ground. The pressure of the ice may, perhaps, bring it to fourteen, or to thirteen. Upon this bed the ice is put, broken and pummelled, and beaten down together in the usual manner.

249. Having got the bed filled with ice, we have next to shut it safely up. As we have seen, there is a passage (e). Two feet wide is enough for this passage; and, being as long as the wall is thick, it is of course, four feet long. The use of the passage is this: that you may have two doors, so that you may, in hot or damp weather, shut the outer door, while you have the inner door open. This inner door may be of hurdle-work, and straw, and covered, on one of the sides, with sheep-skins with the wool on, so as to keep out the external air. The outer-door, which must lock, must be of wood, made to shut very closely, and, besides, covered with skins like the other. At times of great danger from heat, or from wet, the whole of the passage may be filled with straw. The door (p. Fig. 3) should face the North, or between North and East.

250. As to the size of the ice-house, that must, of course, depend upon the quantity of ice that you may choose to have. A house on the above scale, is from w to x (Fig. 2) twenty-nine feet; from y to z (Fig. 2) nineteen feet. The area of the circle, of which a is the centre, is ten feet in diameter, and as this area contains seventy-five superficial feet, you will, if you put ice on the bed to the height of only five feet, (and you may put it on to the height of seven feet from the top of the bed,) you will have three hundred and seventy-five cubic feet of ice; and, observe, a cubic foot of ice will, when broken up, fill much more than a Winchester Bushel: what it may do as to an “Imperial Bushel,” engendered like Greek Loan Commissioners, by the unnatural heat of “Prosperity,” God only knows! However, I do suppose, that, without making any allowance for the “cold fit,” as Dr. Baring calls it, into which “late panic” has brought us; I do suppose, that even the scorching, the burning dog-star of “Imperial Prosperity;” nay, that even Dives himself, would hardly call for more than two bushels of ice in a day; for more than two bushels a day it would be, unless it were used in cold as well as in hot weather.

251. As to the expense of such a house, it could, in the country, not be much. None of the posts, except the main or centre-post, need be very straight. The other posts might be easily culled from tree-lops, destined for fire-wood. The straw would make all straight. The plates must of necessity be short pieces of wood; and, as to the stakes, the laths, and the logs, poles, rods, twigs, and heath, they would not all cost twenty shillings. The straw is the principal article; and, in most places, even that would not cost more than two or three pounds. If it last many years, the price could not be an object; and if but a little while, it would still be nearly as good for litter as it was before it was applied to this purpose. How often the bottom of the straw walls might want renewing I cannot say, but I know that the roof would with few and small repairs, last well for ten years.

252. I have said that the interior row of posts is to be nine feet high, and the exterior row five feet high. I, in each case, mean, with the plate inclusive. I have only to add, that by way of superabundant precaution against bottom wet, it will be well to make a sort of gutter, to receive the drip from the roof, and to carry it away as soon as it falls.

253. Now, after expressing a hope that I shall have made myself clearly understood by every reader, it is necessary that I remind him, that I do not pretend to pledge myself for the complete success, nor for any success at all, of this mode of making ice-houses. But, at the same time, I express my firm belief, that complete success would attend it; because it not only corresponds with what I have seen of such matters; but I had the details from a gentleman who had ample experience to guide him, and who was a man on whose word and judgment I placed a perfect reliance. He advised me to erect an ice-house; but not caring enough about fresh meat and fish in summer, or at least not setting them enough above “prime pork” to induce me to take any trouble to secure the former, I never built an ice-house. Thus, then, I only communicate that in which I believe; there is, however, in all cases, this comfort, that if the thing fail as an ice-house, it will serve all generations to come as a model for a pig-bed.

ADDITION.

Kensington, Nov. 14th, 1831.

MANGEL WURZEL.

254. This last summer, I have proved that, as keep for cows, Mangel Wurzel is preferable to Swedish Turnips, whether as to quantity or quality. But there needs no other alteration in the book, than merely to read mangel wurzel wherever you find Swedish turnip; the time of sowing, the mode and time of transplanting, the distances, and the cultivation, all being the same; and the only difference being in the application of the leaves, and in the time of harvesting the roots.

255. The leaves of the Mangel Wurzel are of great value, especially in dry summers. You begin, about the third week in August, to take off by a downward pull, the leaves of the plants; and they are excellent food for pigs and cows; only observe this, that, if given to cows, there must be, for each cow, six pounds of hay a day, which is not necessary in the case of the Swedish turnips. These leaves last till the crop is taken up, which ought to be in the first week of November. The taking off of the leaves does good to the plants: new leaves succeed higher up; and the plant becomes longer than it otherwise would be, and, of course, heavier. But, in taking off the leaves, you must not approach too near to the top.

256. When you take the plants up in November, you must cut off the crowns and the remaining leaves; and they, again, are for cows and pigs. Then you put the roots into some place to keep them from the frost; and, if you have no place under cover, put them in pies, in the same manner as directed for the Swedish turnips. The roots will average in weight 10 lbs. each. They may be given to cows whole, or to pigs either, and they are better than the Swedish turnip for both animals; and they do not give any bad or strong taste to the milk and butter. But, besides this use of the mangel wurzel, there is another, with regard to pigs at least, of very great importance. The juice of this plant has so much of sweetness in it, that, in France, they make sugar of it; and have used the sugar, and found it equal in goodness to West India sugar. Many persons in England make beer of this juice, and I have drunk of this beer, and found it very good. In short, the juice is most excellent for the mixing of moist food for pigs. I am now (20th Nov. 1831) boiling it for this purpose. My copper holds seven strike-bushels; I put in three bushels of mangel wurzel cut into pieces two inches thick, and then fill the copper with water. I draw off as much of the liquor as I want to wet pollard, or meal, for little pigs or fatting-pigs, and the rest, roots and all, I feed the yard-hogs with; and this I shall follow on till about the middle of May.

257. If you give boiled, or steamed, potatoes to pigs, there wants some liquor to mix with the potatoes; for the water in which potatoes have been boiled is hurtful to any animal that drinks it. But mix the potatoes with juice of mangel wurzel, and they make very good food for hogs of all ages. The mangel wurzel produces a larger crop than the Swedish turnip.

COBBETT’S CORN.

258. IF you prefer bread and pudding to milk, butter, and meat, this corn will produce, on your forty rods, forty bushels, each weighing 60 lbs. at the least; and more flour, in proportion, than the best white wheat. To make bread with it you must use two-thirds wheaten, or rye, flour; but in puddings this is not necessary. The puddings at my house are all made with this flour, except meat and fruit pudding; for the corn flour is not adhesive or clinging enough to make paste, or crust. This corn is the very best for hog-fatting in the whole world. I, last April, sent parcels of the seed into several counties, to be given away to working men: and I sent them instructions for the cultivation, which I shall repeat here.

259. I will first describe this corn to you. It is that which is sometimes called Indian corn; and sometimes people call it Indian wheat. It is that sort of corn which the disciples ate as they were going up to Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day. They gathered it in the fields as they went along and ate it green, they being “an hungered,” for which you know they were reproved by the pharisees. I have written a treatise on this corn in a book which I sell for four shillings, giving a minute account of the qualities, the culture, the harvesting, and the various uses of this corn; but I shall here confine myself to what is necessary for a labourer to know about it, so that he may be induced to raise and may be enabled to raise enough of it in his garden to fat a pig of ten score.

260. 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 summer; for I had a large field of it in 1828 and 1829; and last year (my lease at my farm being out at Michaelmas, 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 no one so cold as the last. Yet my corn ripened perfectly well, and this you will be satisfied of if you be amongst the men to whom this corn is given from me. You will see that it is in the shape of the cone of a spruce fir; you will see that the grains are fixed round a stalk which is called the cob. These stalks or ears come out of the side 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 ears or bunches 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.

261. 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 America, 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.

262. 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 ear; 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 properly ground and managed, will make a pig of ten score, if he be not too poor when you begin to fat him. Observe that everybody 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 pleasure. The finest and solidest bacon in the world is produced in this way.

263. Now, then, I know, that a bushel of shelled corn may be grown upon one single rod of ground sixteen feet and a half each way; I have grown more than that this last summer; and any of you may do the same if you will strictly follow the instructions which I am now about to give you.

1. 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.

3. 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.

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 (in 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.

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 will find the grains of the ears to be full of milk, just in the state 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 be hung up in a shed or stable for a while, and, when perfectly dry, they may be put into bags.

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 a pig; you will have two flitches of bacon, two pig’s cheeks, one set of souse, two griskins, two spare-ribs, from both which I trust in God 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 blasphemous cant of the sleekheaded Methodist thief that would persuade you to live upon potatoes.

264. 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 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.

265. The corn is off by the middle of November. The ground should then be well manured, and deeply dug, and planted with early York, or EARLY DWARF CABBAGES, which will be loaved in the latter end of April, and may be either sold or given to pigs, or cows, before the time to plant the corn again. Thus you have two very large crops on the same ground in the same year.

INDEX.

COBBETT’S

POOR MAN’S FRIEND;

A DEFENCE OF THE RIGHTS OF THOSE WHO DO
THE WORK, AND FIGHT THE BATTLES.

COBBETT’S POOR MAN’S FRIEND.

NUMBER I.

2. Nothing can be more common than to read, in the newspapers, descriptions the most horrible of the sufferings of the Poor, in various parts of England, but particularly in the North. It is related of them, that they eat horse-flesh, grains, and have been detected in eating out of pig-troughs. In short, they are represented as being far worse fed and worse lodged than the greater part of the pigs. These statements of the newspapers may be false, or, at least, only partially true; but, at a public meeting of rate-payers, at Manchester, on the 17th of August, Mr. Baxter, the Chairman, said, that some of the POOR had been starved to death, and that tens of thousands were upon the point of starving; and, at the same meeting, Mr. Potter gave a detail, which showed that Mr. Baxter’s general description was true. Other accounts, very nearly official, and, at any rate, being of unquestionable authenticity, concur so fully with the statements made at the Manchester Meeting, that it is impossible not to believe, that a great number of thousands of persons are now on the point of perishing for want of food, and that many have actually perished from that cause; and that this has taken place, and is taking place, IN ENGLAND.

3. There is, then, no doubt of the existence of the disgraceful and horrid facts; but that which is as horrid as are the facts themselves, and even more horrid than those facts, is the cool and unresentful language and manner in which the facts are usually spoken of. Those who write about the misery and starvation in Lancashire and Yorkshire, never appear to think that any body is to blame, even when the poor die with hunger. The Ministers ascribe the calamity to “over-trading;” the cotton and cloth and other master-manufacturers ascribe it to “a want of paper-money,” or to the Corn-Bill; others ascribe the calamity to the taxes. These last are right; but what have these things to do with the treatment of the poor? What have these things to do with the horrid facts relative to the condition and starvation of English people? It is very true, that the enormous taxes which we pay on account of loans made to carry on the late unjust wars, on account of a great standing army in time of peace, on account of pensions, sinecures and grants, and on account of a Church, which, besides, swallows up so large a part of the produce of the land and the labour; it is very true, that these enormous taxes, co-operating with the paper-money and its innumerable monopolies; it is very true, that these enormous taxes, thus associated, have produced the ruin in trade, manufactures and commerce, and have, of course, produced the low wages and the want of employment; this is very true; but it is not less true, that, be wages or employment as they may, the poor are not to perish with hunger, or with cold, while the rest of the community have food and raiment more than the latter want for their own sustenance. The LAW OF ENGLAND says, that there shall be no person to suffer from want of food and raiment. It has placed officers in every parish to see that no person suffer from this sort of want; and lest these officers should not do their duty, it commands all the magistrates to hear the complaints of the poor, and to compel the officers to do their duty. The LAW OF ENGLAND has provided ample means of relief for the poor; for, it has authorized the officers, or overseers, to get from the rich inhabitants of the parish as much money as is wanted for the purpose, without any limit as to amount; and, in order that the overseers may have no excuse of inability to make people pay, the law has armed them with powers of a nature the most efficacious and the most efficient and most prompt in their operation. In short, the language of the LAW, to the overseer, is this: “Take care that no person suffer from hunger, or from cold; and that you may be sure not to fail of the means of obeying this my command, I give you, as far as shall be necessary for this purpose, full power over all the lands, all the houses, all the goods, and all the cattle, in your parish.” To the Justices of the Peace the LAW says: “Lest the overseer should neglect his duty; lest, in spite of my command to him, any one should suffer from hunger or cold, I command you to be ready to hear the complaint of every sufferer from such neglect; I command you to summon the offending overseer, and to compel him to do his duty.”

4. Such being the language of the LAW, is it not a monstrous state of things, when we hear it commonly and coolly stated, that many thousands of persons in England are upon the point of starvation; that thousands will die of hunger and cold next winter; that many have already died of hunger; and when we hear all this, unaccompanied with one word of complaint against any overseer, or any justice of the peace! Is not this state of things perfectly monstrous? A state of things in which it appears to be taken for granted, that the LAW is nothing, when it is intended to operate as a protection to the poor! Law is always law: if one part of the law may be, with impunity, set at defiance, why not another and every other part of the law? If the law which provides for the succour of the poor, for the preservation of their lives, may be, with impunity, set at defiance, why should there not be impunity for setting at defiance the law which provides for the security of the property and the lives of the rich? If you, in Lancashire, were to read, in an account of a meeting in Hampshire, that, here, the farmers and gentlemen were constantly and openly robbed; that the poor were daily breaking into their houses, and knocking their brains out; and that it was expected that great part of them would be killed very soon: if you, in Lancashire were to hear this said of the state of Hampshire, what would you say? Say! Why, you would say, to be sure, “Where is the LAW; where are the constables, the justices, the juries, the judges, the sheriffs, and the hangmen? Where can that Hampshire be? It, surely, never can be in Old England. It must be some savage country, where such enormities can be committed, and where even those, who talk and who lament the evils, never utter one word in the way of blame of the perpetrators.” And if you were called upon to pay taxes, or to make subscriptions in money, to furnish the means of protection to the unfortunate rich people in Hampshire, would you not say, and with good reason, “No: what should we do this for? The people of Hampshire have the SAME LAW that we have; they are under the same Government; let them duly enforce that law; and then they will stand in no need of money from us to provide for their protection.”

5. This is what common sense says would be your language in such a case; and does not common sense say, that the people of Hampshire, and of every other part of England, will thus think, when they are told of the sufferings, and the starvation, in Lancashire and Yorkshire! The report of the Manchester ley-payers, which took place on the 17th of August, reached me in a friend’s house in this little village; and when another friend, who was present, read, in the speeches of Mr. Baxter and Mr. Potter, that tens of thousands of Lancashire people were on the point of starvation, and that many had already actually died from starvation; and when he perceived, that even those gentlemen uttered not a word of complaint against either overseer or justices of the peace, he exclaimed: “What! are there no poor-laws in Lancashire? Where, amidst all this starvation, is the overseer? Where is the justice of the peace? Surely that Lancashire can never be in England?”

6. The observations of this gentleman are those which occur to every man of sense; when he hears the horrid accounts of the sufferings in the manufacturing districts; for, though we are all well aware, that the burden of the poor-rates presses, at this time, with peculiar weight on the land-owners and occupiers, and on owners and occupiers of other real property, in those districts, we are equally well aware, that those owners and occupiers have derived great benefits from that vast population that now presses upon them. There is land in the parish in which I am now writing, and belonging to the farm in the house of which I am, which land would not let for 20s. a statute acre; while land, not so good, would let, in any part of Lancashire, near to the manufactories, at 60s. or 80s. a statute acre. The same may be said with regard to houses. And, pray, are the owners and occupiers, who have gained so largely by the manufacturing works being near their lands and houses; are they, now, to complain, if the vicinage of these same works causes a charge of rates there, heavier than exists here? Are the owners and occupiers of Lancashire to enjoy an age of advantages from the labours of the spinners and the weavers; and are they, when a reverse comes, to bear none of the disadvantages? Are they to make no sacrifices, in order to save from perishing those industrious and ever-toiling creatures, by the labours of whom their land and houses have been augmented in value, three, five, or perhaps tenfold? None but the most unjust of mankind can answer these questions in the affirmative.

7. But as greediness is never at a loss for excuses for the hard-heartedness that it is always ready to practise, it is said, that the whole of the rents of the land and the houses would not suffice for the purpose; that is to say, that if the poor rates were to be made so high as to leave the tenant no means of paying rent, even then some of the poor must go without a sufficiency of food. I have no doubt that, in particular instances, this would be the case. But for cases like this the LAW has amply provided; for, in every case of this sort, adjoining parishes may be made to assist the hard pressed parish; and if the pressure becomes severe on these adjoining parishes, those next adjoining them may be made to assist; and thus the call upon adjoining parishes maybe extended till it reach all over the county. So good, so benignant, so wise, so foreseeing, and so effectual, is this, the very best of all our good old laws! This law or rather code of laws, distinguishes England from all the other countries in the world, except the United States of America, where, while hundreds of other English statutes have been abolished, this law has always remained in full force, this great law of mercy and humanity, which says, that no human being that treads English ground shall perish for want of food and raiment. For such poor persons as are unable to work, the law provides food and clothing; and it commands that work shall be provided for such as are able to work, and cannot otherwise get employment. This law was passed more than two hundred years ago. Many attempts have been made to chip it away, and some have been made to destroy it altogether; but it still exists, and every man who does not wish to see general desolation take place, will do his best to cause it to be duly and conscientiously executed.

8. Having now, my friends of Preston, stated what the law is, and also the reasons for its honest enforcement in the particular case immediately before us, I will next endeavour to show you that it is founded in the law of nature, and that, were it not for the provisions of this law, people would, according to the opinions of the greatest lawyers, have a right to take food and raiment sufficient to preserve them from perishing; and that such taking would be neither felony nor larceny. This is a matter of the greatest importance; it is a most momentous question; for if it be settled in the affirmative—if it be settled that it is not felony, nor larceny, to take other men’s goods without their assent, and even against their will, when such taking is absolutely necessary to the preservation of life, how great, how imperative, is the duty of affording, if possible, that relief which will prevent such necessity! In other words, how imperative it is on all overseers and justices to obey the law with alacrity; and how weak are those persons who look to “grants” and “subscriptions,” to supply the place of the execution of this, the most important of all the laws that constitute the basis of English society! And if this question be settled in the affirmative; if we find the most learned of lawyers and most wise of men, maintaining the affirmative of this proposition; if we find them maintaining, that it is neither felony nor larceny to take food, in case of extreme necessity, though without the assent, and even against the will of the owner, what are we to think of those (and they are not few in number nor weak in power) who, animated with the savage soul of the Scotch feelosophers, would wholly abolish the poor-laws, or, at least, render them of little effect, and thereby constantly keep thousands exposed to this dire necessity!

9. In order to do justice to this great subject; in order to treat it with perfect fairness, and in a manner becoming of me and of you, I must take the authorities on both sides. There are some great lawyers who have contended that the starving man is still guilty of felony or larceny, if he take food to satisfy his hunger; but there are a greater number of other, and still greater, lawyers, who maintain the contrary. The general doctrine of those who maintain the right to take, is founded on the law of nature; and it is a saying as old as the hills, a saying in every language in the world, that “self-preservation is the first law of nature.” The law of nature teaches every creature to prefer the preservation of its own life to all other things. But, in order to have a fair view of the matter before us, we ought to inquire how it came to pass, that the laws were ever made to punish men as criminals, for taking the victuals, drink, or clothing, that they might stand in need of. We must recollect, then, that there was a time when no such laws existed; when men, like the wild animals in the fields, took what they were able to take, if they wanted it. In this state of things, all the land and all the produce belonged to all the people in common. Thus were men situated, when they lived under what is called the law of nature; when every one provided, as he could, for his self-preservation.

10. At length this state of things became changed: men entered into society; they made laws to restrain individuals from following, in certain cases, the dictates of their own will; they protected the weak against the strong; the laws secured men in possession of lands, houses, and goods, that were called THEIRS; the words MINE and THINE, which mean my own and thy own, were invented to designate what we now call a property in things. The law necessarily made it criminal in one man to take away, or to injure, the property of another man. It was, you will observe, even in this state of nature, always a crime to do certain things against our neighbour. To kill him, to wound him, to slander him, to expose him to suffer from the want of food or raiment, or shelter. These, and many others, were crimes in the eye of the law of nature; but, to take share of a man’s victuals or clothing; to go and insist upon sharing a part of any of the good things that he happened to have in his possession, could be no crime, because there was no property in anything, except in man’s body itself. Now, civil society was formed for the benefit of the whole. The whole gave up their natural rights, in order that every one might, for the future, enjoy his life in greater security. This civil society was intended to change the state of man for the better. Before this state of civil society, the starving, the hungry, the naked man, had a right to go and provide himself with necessaries wherever he could find them. There would be sure to be some such necessitous persons in a state of civil society. Therefore, when civil society was established, it is impossible to believe that it had not in view some provision for these destitute persons. It would be monstrous to suppose the contrary. The contrary supposition would argue, that fraud was committed upon the mass of the people in forming this civil society; for, as the sparks fly upwards, so will there always be destitute persons to some extent or other, in every community, and such there are to now a considerable extent, even in the United States of America; therefore, the formation of the civil society must have been fraudulent or tyrannical upon any other supposition than that it made provision, in some way or other, for destitute persons; that is to say, for persons unable, from some cause or other, to provide for themselves the food and raiment sufficient to preserve them from perishing. Indeed, a provision for the destitute seems essential to the lawfulness of civil society; and this appears to have been the opinion of Blackstone, when, in the first Book and first Chapter of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, he says, “the law not only regards life and member, and protects every man in the enjoyment of them, but also furnishes him with every thing necessary for their support. For there is no man so indigent or wretched, but he may demand a supply sufficient for all the necessaries of life from the more opulent part of the community, by means of the several statutes enacted for the relief of the poor; a humane provision dictated by the principles of society.”

11. No man will contend, that the main body of the people in any country upon earth, and of course in England, would have consented to abandon the rights of nature; to give up their right to enjoy all things in common; no man will believe, that the main body of the people would ever have given their assent to the establishing of a state of things which should make all the lands, and all the trees, and all the goods and cattle of every sort, private property; which should have shut out a large part of the people from having such property, and which should, at the same time, not have provided the means of preventing those of them, who might fall into indigence, from being actually starved to death! It is impossible to believe this. Men never gave their assent to enter into society on terms like these. One part of the condition upon which men entered into society was, that care should be taken that no human being should perish from want. When they agreed to enter into that state of things, which would necessarily cause some men to be rich and some men to be poor; when they gave up that right, which God had given them, to live as well as they could, and to take the means wherever they found them, the condition clearly was, the “principle of society;” clearly was, as Blackstone defines it, that the indigent and wretched should have a right to “demand from the rich a supply sufficient for all the necessities of life.”

12. If the society did not take care to act upon this principle; if it neglected to secure the legal means, of preserving the life of the indigent and wretched; then the society itself, in so far as that wretched person was concerned, ceased to have a legal existence. It had, as far as related to him, forfeited its character of legality. It had no longer any claim to his submission to its laws. His rights of nature returned: as far as related to him, the law of Nature revived in all its force: that state of things in which all men enjoyed all things in common was revived with regard to him; and he took, and he had a right to take, food and raiment, or, as Blackstone expresses it, “a supply sufficient for all the necessities of life.” For, if it be true, as laid down by this English lawyer, that the principles of society; if it be true, that the very principles, or foundations of society dictate, that the destitute person shall have a legal demand for a supply from the rich, sufficient for all the necessities of life; if this be true, and true it certainly is, it follows of course that the principles, that is, the base, or foundation, of society, is subverted, is gone; and that society is, in fact, no longer what it was intended to be, when the indigent, when the person in a state of extreme necessity, cannot, at once, obtain from the rich such sufficient supply: in short, we need go no further than this passage of Blackstone, to show, that civil society is subverted, and that there is, in fact, nothing legitimate in it, when the destitute and wretched have no certain and legal resource.