From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"Defoe, Daniel
History
From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
They would then require a hatmaker, a glover, at least two ropemakers,
four tailors, three weavers of woollen and three weavers of linen, two
basket-makers, two common brewers, ten or twelve shop-keepers to furnish
chandlery and grocery wares, and as many for drapery and mercery, over
and above what they could work. This makes two-and-forty families more,
each at five in a family, which, is two hundred and ten persons; all the
labouring part of these must have at least two servants (the brewers
more), which I cast up at forty more.
Add to these two ministers, one clerk, one sexton or grave-digger, with
their families, two physicians, three apothecaries, two surgeons (less
there could not be, only that for the beginning it might be said the
physicians should be surgeons, and I take them so); this is forty-five
persons, besides servants; so that, in short--to omit many tradesmen more
who would be wanted among them--there would necessarily and voluntarily
follow to these twenty families of farmers at least six hundred more of
their own people.
It is no difficult thing to show that the ready money of 4,000 pounds
which the Government was to advance to those twenty farmers would employ
and pay, and consequently subsist, all these numerous dependants in the
works which must severally be done for them for the first year, after
which the farmers would begin to receive their own money back again; for
all these tradesmen must come to their own market to buy corn, flesh,
milk, butter, cheese, bacon, &c., which after the first year the farmers,
having no rent to pay, would have to spare sufficiently, and so take back
their own money with advantage. I need not go on to mention how, by
consequence provisions increasing and money circulating, this town should
increase in a very little time.
It was proposed also that for the encouragement of all the handicraftsmen
and labouring poor who, either as servants or as labourers for day-work,
assisted the farmers or other tradesmen, they should have every man three
acres of ground given them, with leave to build cottages upon the same,
the allotments to be upon the waste at the end of the cross-roads where
they entered the town.
In the centre of the square was laid out a circle of twelve acres of
ground, to be cast into streets for inhabitants to build on as their
ability would permit--all that would build to have ground gratis for
twenty years, timber out of the forest, and convenient yards, gardens,
and orchards allotted to every house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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