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ANNALS OF THE

not either "hide or hoof," screed or scrawl, mattock or spade, pot or churn, duck-pond, manure-heap, or potato-plot, on the ground that reared him, and simply put his seal to this by pulling the roof from his own cabin. Should the inquirer be at a loss to conjecture how, when, and where this wide-spread philanthropy had a beginning, he is cited back to the good old days of Elizabeth and James, when the zealous Christian plunderer, Cromwell, prepared the way to parcel out the island, and entail it forever to a happy few, who found a race of people who would dig their ditches, build their walls, lay out their parks and ponds, for a penny or two a-day, and above all, could be made patiently to feed on a single root, and live in mud cabins, or by the side of a rock, or burrow in sandbanks, who would "go at their command, and come at their bidding;" and beside, for the unleased patch of ground, where they grew the root on which they subsisted, they paid such a rent as enabled the masters of the soil to live and fare sumptuously at home, to hunt the hare and deer over the mountain and glen, with lady, dog and gun, or to travel in distant lands. With all these appliances, they had lived on, sending care to the winds, till, from generation to generation, they found these "hewers of wood and drawers of water" had become so multifarious that, like Pharaoa's frogs, they encompassed the whole land, covering bog and ditch, crying, "give, give," till dinned and harassed with the undying clamor, they were moved to provide food and shelter in palaces of stone and mortar, where all care