turned to flax and hemp, which are reckoned great impoverishers of land: they cannot therefore be blamed, if they should show as much zeal to prevent its being introduced or improved in their parishes, as they hitherto have showed[1] in the introducing and improving of it. This, I am told, some of them have already declared; at least so far as to resolve not to give themselves any more trouble than other men about promoting a manufacture, by the success of which they only of all men are to be sufferers. Perhaps the giving even a farther encouragement than the law does, as it now stands, to a set of men, who might on many accounts be so useful to this purpose, would be no bad method of having the great end of the bill more effectually answered: but this is what they are are far from desiring; all they petition for, is no more than to continue on the came footing with the rest of their fellow subjects.
If this modus of paying by the acre be to pass into a law, it were to be wished, that the same law would not only appoint one or more sworn surveyors in each parish to measure the lands, on which flax and hemp are sown, but also settle the price of surveying, and determine whether the incumbent or farmer is to pay, for each annual survey. Without something of this kind there must constantly be disputes between them, and the neighbouring justices of peace must be teased as often as those disputes happen.
I had written thus far, when, a paper was sent to me with several reasons against the bill, some whereof, although they have been already touched, are put in a better light, and the rest did not occur to me. I shall deliver them in the author's own words.
- ↑ It should be — 'have shown.'
