weekly in lieu of beer, leaving them to buy and use it as they
please. I understood that Mr. Jonas adopts the latter course, not
only to save himself the trouble of furnishing and rationing such a
large quantity of beer, but also to induce the habit among his men
of appropriating the money he gives them instead of drink to better
purposes. The sum paid to them last year was actually 452 pounds,
or about $2,200! Now, it would be quite safe to say, that there is
not a farm in the State of Connecticut that produces pasturage, hay,
grain, and roots enough to pay this beer-bill of a single English
occupation! This fact may not only serve to show the scale of
magnitude which agricultural enterprise has assumed in the hands of
such men as Mr. Jonas, but also to indicate to our American farmers
some of the charges upon English agriculture from which they are
exempt; thanks to the Maine Law, or, to a better one still, that of
voluntary disuse of strong drink on our farms. I do not believe
that 100 laboring men and boys could be found on one establishment
in Great Britain more temperate, intelligent, industrious, and moral
than the set employed by Mr. Jonas. Still, notice the tax levied
upon his land by this beer-impost. It amounted last year to three
English shillings, or seventy-two cents, on every acre of the five
consolidated farms, including all the space occupied by hedges,
copses, buildings, etc. Suppose a Maine farmer were obliged, by an
inexorable law of custom, to pay a beer-tax of seventy-two cents per
acre on his estate of 150 acres, or $108, annually, would he not be
glad to "commute" with his hired men, by leaving them in possession
of his holding and migrating to some distant section of the country
where such a custom did not exist?

The gross income of this great holding it would be more difficult to
estimate. But no one can doubt the yearly issues of Mr. Jonas'