This Exemption From Rent And Taxes To Continue For
Twenty Years, And Then To Pay Each 50 Pounds A Year To The Queen--
That Is To Say, To The Crown.
To each of these families, whom I would now call farmers, it was
proposed to advance 200 pounds in
Ready money as a stock to set
them to work; to furnish them with cattle, horses, cows, hogs, &c.;
and to hire and pay labourers to inclose, clear, and cure the land,
which it would be supposed the first year would not be so much to
their advantage as afterwards, allowing them timber out of the
forest to build themselves houses and barns, sheds and offices, as
they should have occasion; also for carts, waggons, ploughs,
harrows, and the like necessary things: care to be taken that the
men and their families went to work forthwith according to the
design.
Thus twenty families would be immediately supplied and provided
for, for there would be no doubt but these families, with so much
land given them gratis, and so much money to work with, would live
very well; but what would this do for the support of the rest, who
were supposed to be, to every twenty farmers, forty or fifty
families of other people (some of one trade, some of another), with
women and children? To this it was answered that these twenty
farmers would, by the consequence of their own settlements, provide
for and employ such a proportion of others of their own people
that, by thus providing for twenty families in a place, the whole
number of Palatinates would have been provided for, had they been
twenty thousand more in number than they were, and that without
being any burden upon or injury to the people of England; on the
contrary, they would have been an advantage and an addition of
wealth and strength to the nation, and to the country in particular
where they should be thus seated. For example:-
As soon as the land was marked out, the farmers put in possession
of it, and the money given them, they should be obliged to go to
work, in order to their settlement. Suppose it, then, to be in the
spring of the year, when such work was most proper. First, all
hands would be required to fence and part off the land, and clear
it of the timber or bushes, or whatever else was upon it which
required to be removed. The first thing, therefore, which the
farmer would do would be to single out from the rest of their
number every one three servants--that is to say, two men and a
maid; less could not answer the preparations they would be obliged
to make, and yet work hard themselves also. By the help of these
they would, with good management, soon get so much of their land
cured, fenced-off, ploughed, and sowed as should yield them a
sufficiency of corn and kitchen stuff the very first year, both for
horse-meat, hog-meat, food for the family, and some to carry to
market, too, by which to bring in money to go farther on, as above.
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