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dish, artichokes of Jerusalem,' maize, and the like: for wheat, barley, and oats, they ask too much labour; but with peas and beans you may begin, both because they ask less labour, and because they serve for meat as well as for bread; and of rice likewise cometh a great increase, and it is a kind of meat. Above all, there ought to be brought store of biscuit, oatmeal, flour, meal,' and the like, in the beginning, till bread may be had. For beasts or birds, take chiefly such as are least subject to diseases, and multiply fastest: as swine, goats, cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, house-doves, and the like. The victual in plantations ought to be expended almost as in a besieged town, that is, with certain allowance; and let the main part of the ground employed to gardens or corn be to a common stock, and to be laid in, and stored up, and then delivered out in proportion; besides some spots of ground that any particular person will manure for his own private. Consider likewise, what commodities the soil where the plantation is doth naturally yield, that they may some way help to defray the charge of the plantation; so it be not, as was said, to the untimely prejudice of the main business, as it hath fared with tobacco in Virginia. Wood commonly aboundeth but too much, and therefore timber is fit to be one. If there be iron ore, and streams whereupon to set the mills, iron is a brave commodity where wood aboundeth. Making of bay salt, if the climate be proper for it, would be put in experience;' growing silk, likewise, if any be, is a likely commodity; pitch and tar, where store of firs and pines are, will not fail; so drugs and sweet woods, where

1 Artichokes of Jerusalem. A well-known culinary plant, originally of Brazil: the name Jerusalem being merely a corruption of the Italian Girasole—that is Sun-flower, or Turn-sole.

Flour' is still used in Suffolk to signify, exclusively, that which is finely sifted: and 'meal' that which comes from the mill.

To. In. 'Still a greater difficulty upon translators rises from the peculiarities every language has to itself.'-Felton.

4

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To. For. See page 246. The proper business of the understanding is not that which men always employ it to.'-Locke.

Private. Particular use or benefit; private object.

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Nor must I be unmindful of my private,

For which I have called my brother and the tribunes,

My kinsfolk, and my clients, to be near me.'-Ben Jonson.

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Brave. Excellent; fine. A brave attendance.'-Shakespere.

Experience. Experiment; trial. As curious experiences did affirm.'—Ray.

they are, cannot but yield great profit; soap ashes likewise, and other things that may be thought of; but moil' not too much under ground, for the hope of mines is very uncertain, and useth to make the planters lazy in other things. For government, let it be in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel, and let them have commission to exercise martial laws, with some limitation. And, above all, let men make that profit of being in the wilderness, as they have God always, and his service before their eyes. Let not the government of the plantation depend upon too many counsellors and undertakers in the country that planteth, but upon a temperate number; and let those be rather noblemen and gentlemen, than merchants; for they look ever to the present gain. Let there be freedoms from custom, till the plantation be of strength, and not only freedom from custom, but freedom to carry their commodities where they may make their best of them, except there be some special cause of caution. Cram not in people, by sending too fast, company after company, but rather hearken' how they waste, and send supplies proportionably; but so as the number may live well in the plantation, and not by surcharge be in penury. It hath been a great endangering to the health of some plantations, that they have built along the sea and rivers, in marish and unwholesome grounds; therefore, though you begin there, to avoid carriage and other like discommodities,' yet build still rather upwards from the stream, than along it. It concerneth likewise the health of the plantation that they have good store

Moil. To toil; to drudge.

'Now he must moil and drudge for one he loathes.'-Dryden.

As. That. See page 23.

• Undertakers. Managers of affairs.

Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.'-Shakespere.

now confined to the managers of funerals.)

4 Except. Unless. See page 280.

Hearken.

Watch; observe.

"They do me too much injury,

That ever said I hearkened for your death.'-Shakespere.

I mount the terrass, thence the town survey,

And hearken What the fruitful sounds convey.'-Dryden.

• Marish. Marshy; swampy. The fen and quagmire, so marish by kind, are to be drained.'-Tusser.

7 Discommodities. Inconveniences. We stand balancing the discommodities of two corrupt disciplines.'-Milton.

of salt with them, that they may use it in their victuals when it shall be necessary.

If you plant where savages are, do not only entertain them with trifles and gingles, but use them justly and graciously, with sufficient guard, nevertheless: and do not win their favour by helping them to invade their enemies, but for their defence, it is not amiss; and send oft' of them over to the country that plants, that they may see a better condition than their own, and commend it when they return.

When the plantation grows to strength, then it is time to plant with women as well as with men, that the plantation may spread into generations, and not be ever pieced from without. It is the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake or destitute2 a plantation once in forwardness; for, besides the dishonour, it is the guiltiness of blood of many many commisserable persons.

ANNOTATIONS.

'It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant.'

Yet two-and-a-half centuries after Bacon's time, the English government, in opposition to the remonstrances of the enlightened and most emphatically experienced philanthropist― Howard,-established its penal colonies in Australia, and thus, in the language of Shakespere, 'began an impudent nation.'

It is now above a quarter of a century since I began pointing out to the public the manifold mischiefs of such a system; and with Bacon and Howard on my side, I persevered in braving all the obloquy and ridicule that were heaped on me. But successive ministries, of the most opposite political parties,

Oft. Often (chiefly used in poetry).

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Oft she rejects, but never once offends.'-Pope.

2 Destitute. To leave destitute. Suppose God thus destitute us, yet overanxiety, or solicitude, or using of unlawful means, can never be able to secure us.' -Hammond.

* Commisserable. Worthy of compassion. This commisserable -Bacon's Henry VII.

person, Edward.

agreed in supporting what the most eminent political economist of the present day had described as a 'system begun in defiance of all reason, and persevered in defiance of all experience.'

'And not only so, but it spoileth the plantation.'

Bacon has not pointed out one particular disadvantage of this mode of colonization. The emancipists, as they are called -those who have come out as convicts, are described, and that by some advocates of the system, as for the most part idle, unthrifty settlers; and the currency, those born in the colony, are represented as generally preferring a seafaring life; having the odious associations of crime and slavery connected with agricultural pursuits, a feeling perfectly natural under such circumstances, but the very last one we would wish to find in a colony. One of the results-not, I apprehend, originally contemplated when penal colonies were established in New South Wales by the English government,-is that these 'wicked condemned men' have planted for themselves several volunteercolonies; escaping in small craft either to the South Sea Islands (in many of which, for a good while past, each native chief has for a prime-minister some choice graduate of the university of Newgate), or, more frequently, to some part of the coast of New Holland. Thus the land is certainly planted, but it is planted with the worst of weeds, according to the ingenious experiment suggested, in the Tempest, for Prospero's island:

'Gonzalo. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord . . . .
Antonio. He'd sow it with nettle seed,'

This was one of the arguments put forward by me, in the hope of awakening the public mind to the real character and extent of the evil, in a pamphlet in the form of a letter addressed to Earl Grey, from which I give some extracts.

'The defenders of the system generally keep out of sight the inconsistency of professing to aim at the mutual benefit of the mother country and the colonies, on a plan which sets the two in direct opposition; and present, separately and alternately, the supposed advantage of 'getting rid' (as it is called) of criminals, and that of encouraging a growing colony, so as to withdraw the attention from the real incompatibility of the two.

'In other subjects, as well as in this, I have observed that two distinct objects may, by being dexterously presented, again and again in quick succession, to the mind of a cursory reader, be so associated together in his thoughts, as to be conceived capable, when in fact they are not, of being actually combined in practice. The fallacious belief thus induced bears a striking resemblance to the optical illusion effected by that ingenious and philosophical toy called the 'thaumatrope;' in which two objects painted on opposite sides of a card,-for instance, a man, and a horse, a bird, and a cage,-are by a quick rotatory motion, made to impress the eye in combination, so as to form one picture, of the man on the horse's back,-the bird in the cage, &c. As soon as the card is allowed to remain at rest, the figures, of course, appear as they really are, separate and on opposite sides. A mental illusion closely analogous to this is produced, when, by a rapid and repeated transition from one subject to another, alternately, the mind is deluded into an idea of the actual combination of things that are really incompatible. The chief part of the defence which various writers have advanced in favour of the system of penal colonies consists, in truth, of a sort of intellectual thaumatrope. The prosperity of the colony, and the repression of crime are, by a sort of rapid whirl, presented to the mind as combined in one picture. A very moderate degree of calm and fixed attention soon shows that the two objects are painted on opposite sides of the card.

"In aid of this and the other modes of defence resorted to, a topic is introduced from time to time in various forms, which is equally calculated to meet all objections whatever on all subjects that no human system can be expected to be perfect; that some partial inconvenience in one part or in another must be looked for; and that no plan can be so well devised as not to require vigilant and judicious superintendence, to keep it in effectual operation, and to guard against the abuses to which it is liable, &c. &c.

All this is very true, but does not in reality at all meet the present objections. Though we cannot build a house which shall never need repair, we may avoid such a misconstruction as shall cause it to fall down by its own weight. Though it be impossible to construct a time-piece which shall need no winding up, and which shall go with perfect exactitude, we may

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