it alone would raise them to a new condition of comfort, even independence.  At 4d. a day commutation money, they would have each 5 pounds at the end of the year.  That would pay the rent of two acres of land here; or it would buy five on the Illinois Central Railroad.  Three years’ beer-money would pay for those rich prairie acres, his fare by sea and land to them, and leave him 3 pounds in his pocket to begin their cultivation with.  Three years of this saving would make almost a new man of him at home, in the way of self-respect, comfort and progress.  It would be a “nest-egg,” to which hope, habit and a strengthening ambition would add others of larger size and value from year to year.

Give, then, the British agricultural laborer good, healthy Housing, Free Schooling, and let him empty the Jug into the Basket, and he may work his way up to a very comfortable condition at home.  But if he should prefer to go to Australia or America, where land is cheap and labor dear, in a few years he may save enough to take him to either continent, with sufficient left in his pocket to begin life in a new world.

CHAPTER XII.

FARM GAME—­HALLETT WHEAT—­OUNDLE—­COUNTRY BRIDGES—­FOTHERINGAY
CASTLE—­QUEEN MARY’S IMPRISONMENT AND EXECUTION—­BURGHLEY HOUSE: 
THE PARK, AVENUES, ELMS, AND OAKS—­THOUGHTS ON TREES, ENGLISH AND
AMERICAN.

Having now pursued a westerly direction until I was in the range of a continuous upland section of country, I took a northward course and walked on to Oundle, a goodly town in Northamptonshire, as unique as its name.  On the way, in crossing over to another turnpike road, I passed through a large tract of land in a very deshabille condition, rough, boggy and bushy.  I soon found it was a game-growing estate, and very productive of all sorts of birds and small quadrupeds.  The fields I crossed showed a promising crop of hares and rabbits; and doubtless there were more partridges on that square mile than in the whole State of Connecticut.  This is a characteristic of the country which will strike an American, at his first visit, with wonder.  He will see hares and rabbits bobbing about on common farms, and partridges in broods, like separate flocks of hens and chickens, in fields of grain, within a stone’s throw of the farmer’s house.  I doubt if any county in New England produces so many in a year as the holding of Mr. Samuel Jonas already described.  Rabbits have been put out of the pale of protection somewhat recently, I believe, and branded with the bad name of vermin; so that the tenant farmer may kill them on his occupation without leave or license from the landlord.  It may indicate their number to state the fact, that one hundred and twenty-five head of them were killed in one day’s shooting on Mr. Jonas’s estate by his sons and some of their friends.