influencing their dependents by their examples, saving their own wealth,
and letting their neighbours profit by their necessary expenses, thereby
keeping them from misery, and its unavoidable consequence, discontent?
Or is it better to flock to London, be lost in a crowd, kiss the King's
hand, and take a view of the royal family? The seeing of the royal house
may animate their zeal for it; but other advantages I know not. What
employment have any of our gentlemen got by their attendance at Court,
to make up to them their expenses? Why, about forty of them have been
created peers, and a little less than a hundred of them baronets and
knights. For these excellent advantages, thousands of our gentry have
squeezed their tenants, impoverished the trader, and impaired their own
fortunes!

Another great calamity, is the exorbitant raising of the rents of lands.
Upon the determination of all leases made before the year 1690, a
gentleman thinks he has but indifferently improved his estate if he has
only doubled his rent-roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent, leases
granted but for a small term of years, tenants tied down to hard
conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to
the best advantage, by the certainty they have of the rent being raised,
on the expiration of their lease, proportionably to the improvements
they shall make. Thus is honest industry restrained; the farmer is a
slave to his landlord; 'tis well if he can cover his family with a
coarse home-spun frieze. The artisan has little dealings with him; yet
he is obliged to take his provisions from him at an extravagant price,
otherwise the farmer cannot pay his rent.

The proprietors of lands keep great part of them in their own hands for
sheep-pasture; and there are thousands of poor wretches who think
themselves blessed, if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire's
dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato-plantation, on condition
of being as very slaves as any in America. What can be more deplorable,
than to behold wretches starving in the midst of plenty!

We are apt to charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom find
them employed; but then we don't consider they have nothing to do. Sir
William Temple, in his excellent remarks on the United Provinces,
inquires why Holland, which has the fewest and worst ports and
commodities of any nation in Europe, should abound in trade, and
Ireland, which has the most and best of b