bleating lamb, know well where to apply the knife, so do you know where
to inflict a deadly wound in the most vital part. There is, to be sure,
this distinction between you and the butcher; it is his business, it
is his profession, by which he gets his daily bread; and, indeed, the
sooner he kills his victim the more merciful he is: but as for you, your
conduct is ten thousand times more brutal than that of the butcher,
inasmuch as you inflict torture upon a human being, merely for the
pleasure of inflicting torture. And do you really believe, are you so
besotted as to flatter yourselves, that you will escape? Do you really
believe, that "Where vice and cruelty go before, vengeance will not
follow after?" Vain and delusive hope!!! Justice is slow, very slow, in
reaching the minions of power; but she is certain to prevail at last.
This digression I am sure will be excused, and I will now proceed.
This period (1801 and 1802) may be said to have been the zenith of the
farmers' glory. If a farm was to be let, scores were riding and driving
over each other, ready to break their necks to take it, to rent it
at any price. Not only farmers, but tailors, tinkers, grocers,
linen-drapers, and all sorts of tradesmen and shopkeepers, were running,
_helter shelter_, to be farmers; men connected with the press, and
cunning attorneys were joining in the chase; men of all professions,
indeed, were now eager to become gentlemen farmers. My father used
to class the whole of these under the general denomination of APRON
FARMERS. Never was there a more significant and intelligible term
applied to any set of men. In every parish you now saw one or two of
these _apron farmers_, gentlemen who knew very well how to handle a
yard, so as to make short measure in selling a piece of cloth; men who
could acquit themselves well at a pestle and mortar, who could tie up a
paper parcel, or "split a fig;" who could drive a goose-quill, or ogle
the ladies from behind a counter, very decently; but who knew no more
about the management of a farm than they did about algebra, or the most