Poor Dan used to say that he was the best abused man in Europe: but I 'll tell you that the potato is the best abused vegetable in the universal globe. From the "Times" down to the Scotch farmers, it's one hue-and-cry after it,--"The filthy root"--"The disgusting tuber,"--"The source of all Irish misery,"--"The father of famine, and mother of fever,"--on they go, blackguarding the only food of the people, till at last, as if it were a judgment on their bad tongues, it took to rot in the ground, and left us with nothing to eat. Now, Tom, you know as well as myself, Ireland is not a wheat country; it's one year in three that we can raise a crop of it; for our climate is as treacherous as the English Government. I hope you would n't have us live on oats, like the Scotch; nor on Indian com, like the savages; so what is there like the potato? And then, how easy the culture, and how simple the cookery! It does well in every soil, and agrees well with every constitution. It feeds the peasant, it fattens the pig, it rears the children, and supports the chickens. What can compare with that?
Do you know that there's no cant of the day annoys me more than that cry about model farming, and green crops, and rotations, and subsoiling, and so on. The whole ingenuity of mankind would seem devoted to ascertaining how much a bullock can eat, and how little will feed a laborer. Stuff one and starve the other, and you may be the President of an Agricultural Society, and Chairman of your Union. What treatises we have upon stock, and improving the breed of boars! Will you tell me who ever thought of turning the same attention to the condition of the people? and I'm sure, if you go into the county Galway, you 'll soon acknowledge that they need it. "Look at that lanky pig," calls out the Scotch steward, in derision; "his snout and his legs are fit for a greyhound!" But I say, "Look at Paddy, there. His neck is shrivelled and knotted, like an old vine-tree; his back rounded, and his legs crooked; all for want of care and nourishment. Is all your sympathy to be kept for the sheep, and have you none for the shepherd?"
I made some memorandums for you about Belgian farming, but Mary Anne curled her hair with them. It's no loss to you, however, for their system would n't do with us. Small tenures and spade husbandry do mighty well here, because there are great cities within a few miles of each other, and agriculture takes somewhat the character of market gardening; but their success would be far different were there long distances to be traversed with the produce.