In England, we have people faring
sumptuously while they are getting good wages, and coming on the parish
paupers the moment those wages are suspended. Here, people are never
dependent upon any support but their own; but they live, of their own
free will, in a style of frugality which a landlord would be hooted at
for suggesting to his cottagers. We pity Hodge, reduced to bacon and
greens, and to meat only once a week. The principal meal of a Guernsey
farmer consists of _soupe a la graisse_, which is, being interpreted,
cabbage and peas stewed with a little dripping. This is the daily dinner
of men who _own_ perhaps three or four cows, a pig or two, and poultry.
But the produce and the flesh of these creatures they sell in the
market, investing their gains in extension of land, or stock, or in
"quarters," that is, rent-charges on land, certificates of which are
readily bought and sold in the market."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Letters and other writings of the late Edward Denison,
M.P._, pp. 141, 142.]
Mr. Dension died before he could accomplish much. He was only able to
make a beginning. The misery, arising from improvidence, which he so
deeply deplored, still exists, and is even more widely spread. It is not
merely the artizan who spends all that he earns, but the classes above
him, who cannot plead the same excuse of ignorance.
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