Warnes of
Trimmingham, teach the people here to annihilate poor-rates by
growing flax upon some of the finest flax land, and in the finest
flax climate, that we have in England? The shrewd Cornishmen of
Launceston and Bodmin have awakened long ago to 'the new gospel of
fertility.' When will North Devon awake?
'When landlords and farmers,' said Claude, 'at last acknowledge their
divine vocation, and feel it a noble and heaven-ordained duty to
produce food for the people of England; when they learn that to grow
rushes where they might grow corn, ay, to grow four quarters of wheat
where they might grow five, is to sin against God's blessings and
against the English nation. No wonder that sluggards like these cry
out for protection--that those who cannot take care of the land feel
that they themselves need artificial care.'
'We will not talk politics, Claude. Our modern expediency mongers
have made them pro tempore an extinct science. "Let the dead bury
their dead." The social questions are now-a-days becoming far more
important than the mere House of Commons ones.
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