disastrous to the people's interests. While these statesmen
nursed their own bantlings and held them up to national notice,
they were apt to avoid or too lightly regard the views of men as
able as themselves. For instance, Joshua Hale-- who is far above
these remarks generally--had put forth a scheme for the solution
of the St. Helena property question--very likely a good one,
albeit revolutionary, and nothing would convince him that any
other could succeed. He wished every man in St. Helena--a
turbulent adjunct of the British Empire--to be a landowner, and I
do think, neither desired nor hoped that any man in that island
should be happy until he was one. Yet there were other men ready
to offer simpler remedies, and to prove that if every man in St.
Helena became a landowner it would become a very hell upon earth,
and more unmanageable than it was before. If these gentlemen do
not sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a settlement,
what will become of St. Helena?

Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby. One thought that
repeal of the Poor-Laws and a new system of relief would reach
his case; another saw the root of the Baby's sorrow in Trades'
Unions; a third propounded cooperative manufactures; a
fourth suggested that a vast source of income lay untouched in
the seas about the kingdom, which swarmed with porpoises, and
showed how certain parts of these animals were available for
food, others for leather, others for a delicious oil that would
be sweeter and more pleasant than butter; a fifth desired a law
to repress the tendency of Scotch peers to evict tenants and
convert arable lands into sheep-walks and deer-forests; a sixth
maintained that there were waste lands in the kingdom of capacity
to support hungry millions. In fact earth, heaven, and seas were