shillings and fourpence, and a fat goose for twopence-halfpenny.  You never read that women received a penny a day for hay-making or weeding in the corn, and that a gallon of red wine was sold for fourpence.  These are matters which historians have deemed to be beneath their notice; but they are matters of real importance:  they are matters which ought to have practical effect at this time; for these furnish the criterion whereby we are to judge of our condition compared with that of our forefathers.  The poor-rates form a great feature in the laws and customs of this country.  Put to a thousand persons who have read what is called the history of England; put to them the question, how the poor-rates came? and nine hundred and ninety-nine of the thousand will tell you, that they know nothing at all of the matter.  This is not history; a list of battles and a string of intrigues are not history, they communicate no knowledge applicable to our present state; and it really is better to amuse oneself with an avowed romance, which latter is a great deal worse than passing one’s time in counting the trees.

75.  History has been described as affording arguments of experience; as a record of what has been, in order to guide us as to what is likely to be, or what ought to be; but, from this romancing history, no such experience is to be derived:  for it furnishes no facts on which to found arguments relative to the existing or future state of things.  To come at the true history of a country you must read its laws:  you must read books treating of its usages and customs in former times; and you must particularly inform yourself as to prices of labour and of food.  By reading the single Act of the 23rd year of EDWARD the THIRD, specifying the price of labour at that time; by reading an Act of Parliament passed in the 24th year of HENRY the EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and then reading the CHRONICON PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows the price of food in the former reign, you come into full possession of the knowledge of what England was in former times.  Divers books teach how the divisions of the country arose, and how its great institutions were established; and the result of this reading is a store of knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for the whole of your life.

76.  History, however, is by no means the only thing about which every man’s leisure furnishes him with the means of reading; besides which, every man has not the same taste.  Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud anything you read, merely because it is the fashion to admire and applaud it.  Read, consider well what you read, form your own judgment, and stand by that judgment in despite of the sayings of what are called learned