and therefore, on
the skirts of forests or commons, a couple or three pigs may be kept, if
the family be considerable; and especially if the cottager brew his own
beer, which will give him grains to assist the wash. Even in _lanes_, or
on the sides of great roads, a pig will find a good part of his food from
May to November; and if he be _yoked_, the occupiers of the neighbourhood
must be churlish and brutish indeed, if they give the owner any annoyance.

144. Let me break off here for a moment to point out to my readers the
truly excellent conduct of Lord WINCHILSEA and Lord STANHOPE, who, as I
read, have taken great pains to make the labourers on their estates
comfortable, by allotting to each a piece of ground sufficient for the
keeping of a cow. I once, when I lived at Botley, proposed to the
copyholders and other farmers in my neighbourhood, that we should petition
the Bishop of Winchester, who was lord of the manors thereabouts, to grant
titles to all the numerous persons called _trespassers on the wastes_; and
also to give titles to others of the poor parishioners, who were willing
to make, on the skirts of the wastes, enclosures not exceeding an acre
each. This I am convinced, would have done a great deal towards relieving
the parishes, then greatly burdened by men out of work. This would have
been better than digging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a
single man would agree to my proposal! One, a bullfrog farmer (now, I
hear, pretty well sweated down,) said it would only make them _saucy_! And
one, a true disciple of _Malthus_, said, that to facilitate their rearing
of children _was a harm_! This man had, at the time, in his own
occupation, land that had formerly been _six farms_, and he had, too, ten
or a dozen children. I will not mention names; but this farmer will _now_,
perhaps, have occasion to call to mind what I told him on that day, when
his opposition, and particularly the ground of it, gave me the more pain,
as he was a very industrious, civil, and honest man. Never was there a
greater mistake than to suppose that men are made saucy and idle by just
and kind treatment. _Slaves_ are always lazy and saucy; nothing but the
lash will extort from them either labour or respectful deportment. I never
met with a _saucy_ Yankee (New Englander) in my life. Never servile;
always civil. This must necessarily be the character of _freemen living in
a state of competence_. They have nobody to envy; nobody