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The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those lands are so heavily mortgaged that such a reduction of value would ruin them; nor will they like to be forced to raise vegetables rather than wheat, and turn themselves into market-gardeners instead of great proprietors.
This is another result of the economic changes caused by the Hannibalic war, and is curiously illustrated by the speech of the cook of a great household in the Pseudolus of Plautus, who prides himself on not being as other cooks are, who make the guests into beasts of the field, stuffing them with all kinds of food which cattle eat, and even with things which cattle would refuse! we may take it that at all times the Roman of the lower class consumed fruit and vegetables largely, and thus gave employment to a number of market-gardeners and small purveyors.
They are not met in social intercourse or industrial partnership by any class of colonists, but work apart as gold-diggers, market-gardeners, and small shop-keepers, and are the same inscrutable, industrious, insanitary race of gamblers and opium-smokers in New Zealand as elsewhere. At one time they were twice as numerous. Then a poll-tax of £10 was levied on all new-comers.
The Board was constituted, and we were rather a three-cornered lot: my co-warden; a boot and shoemaker in Evesham, with land in Badsey; a carpenter and small builder; three small market-gardeners and myself.
The regular ambulance wagons of the medical department, two-wheeled and four-wheeled, were too few in number to meet the demand, and vehicles of every description from the artillery and other trains, prolonges, provision vans, everything on wheels that could be picked up on the battlefield, came rolling up with their ghastly loads; and later in the day even carrioles and market-gardeners' carts were pressed into the service and harnessed to horses that were found straying along the roads.
To put it another way: in cultivating like M. Ponce and his results have already been surpassed 350 adults should each give a little more than 100 hours a year to produce vegetables and fruit necessary for 500 people. Let us mention that such a production is not the exception. It takes place, under the walls of Paris, on an area of 2,220 acres, by 5,000 market-gardeners.
Railways are piercing the Pines; surveyors are marking them out in imaginary squares; market-gardeners are engaging land; and farmers are clearing it. The Rat is driven from point to point, from one means of subsistence to another; and shortly, he will have to make the bitter choice between regulated labor and starvation clean off from the face of the earth.
Over yonder in the dark, crowded, populous quarters, in the Paris of tradesmen and workmen, they know nothing of the pretty morning mist that loiters on the broad avenues; the bustle of the waking hours, the passing and repassing of market-gardeners' wagons, omnibuses, drays loaded with old iron, soon chop it and rend it and scatter it.
They each carry tiny tricolour flags, with a Pike and Cap of Liberty surmounting the flagstaff. They are good patriots the market-gardeners, who come in daily to feed the starving mob of Paris, with the few handfuls of watery potatoes, and miserable, vermin-eaten cabbages, which that fraternal Revolution still allows them to grow without hindrance.
At that hour, on the road near the fortifications, was an endless procession of soldiers and market-gardeners, guard-mounting, officers' horses out for exercise, sutlers with their paraphernalia, all the bustle and activity that is seen in the morning in the neighborhood of forts. Planus was striding along amid the tumult, when suddenly he stopped.
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