Must severally be done for them for
the first year, after which the farmers would begin to receive
their own money back again; for all these tradesmen must come to
their own market to buy corn, flesh, milk, butter, cheese, bacon,
&c., which after the first year the farmers, having no rent to pay,
would have to spare sufficiently, and so take back their own money
with advantage. I need not go on to mention how, by consequence
provisions increasing and money circulating, this town should
increase in a very little time.
It was proposed also that for the encouragement of all the
handicraftsmen and labouring poor who, either as servants or as
labourers for day-work, assisted the farmers or other tradesmen,
they should have every man three acres of ground given them, with
leave to build cottages upon the same, the allotments to be upon
the waste at the end of the cross-roads where they entered the
town.
In the centre of the square was laid out a circle of twelve acres
of ground, to be cast into streets for inhabitants to build on as
their ability would permit--all that would build to have ground
gratis for twenty years, timber out of the forest, and convenient
yards, gardens, and orchards allotted to every house.
In the great streets near where they cross each other was to be
built a handsome market-house, with a town-hall for parish or
corporation business, doing justice and the like; also shambles;
and in a handsome part of the ground mentioned to be laid out for
streets, as near the centre as might be, was to be ground laid out
for the building a church, which every man should either contribute
to the building of in money, or give every tenth day of his time to
assist in labouring at the building.
I have omitted many tradesmen who would be wanted here, and would
find a good livelihood among their country-folks only to get
accidental work as day-men or labourers (of which such a town would
constantly employ many), as also poor women for assistance in
families (such as midwives, nurses, &c.).
Adjacent to the town was to be a certain quantity of common-land
for the benefit of the cottages, that the poor might have a few
sheep or cows, as their circumstances required; and this to be
appointed at the several ends of the town.
There was a calculation made of what increase there would be, both
of wealth and people, in twenty years in this town; what a vast
consumption of provisions they would cause, more than the four
thousand acres of land given them would produce, by which
consumption and increase so much advantage would accrue to the
public stock, and so many subjects be added to the many thousands
of Great Britain, who in the next age would be all true-born
Englishmen, and forget both the language and nation from whence
they came. And it was in order to this that two ministers were
appointed, one of which should officiate in English and the other
in High Dutch, and withal to have them obliged by a law to teach
all their children both to speak, read, and write the English
language.
Upon their increase they would also want barbers and glaziers,
painters also, and plumbers; a windmill or two, and the millers and
their families; a fulling-mill and a cloth-worker; as also a master
clothier or two for making a manufacture among them for their own
wear, and for employing the women and children; a dyer or two for
dyeing their manufactures; and, which above all is not to be
omitted, four families at least of smiths, with every one two
servants--considering that, besides all the family work which
continually employs a smith, all the shoeing of horses, all the
ironwork of ploughs, carts, waggons, harrows, &c., must be wrought
by them. There was no allowance made for inns and ale-houses,
seeing it would be frequent that those who kept public-houses of
any sort would likewise have some other employment to carry on.
This was the scheme for settling the Palatinates, by which means
twenty families of farmers, handsomely set up and supported, would
lay a foundation, as I have said, for six or seven hundred of the
rest of their people; and as the land in New Forest is undoubtedly
good, and capable of improvement by such cultivation, so other
wastes in England are to be found as fruitful as that; and twenty
such villages might have been erected, the poor strangers
maintained, and the nation evidently be bettered by it. As to the
money to be advanced, which in the case of twenty such settlements,
at 1,000 pounds each, would be 80,000 pounds, two things were
answered to it:-
1. That the annual rent to be received for all those lands after
twenty years would abundantly pay the public for the first
disburses on the scheme above, that rent being then to amount to
40,000 pounds per annum.
2. More money than would have done this was expended, or rather
thrown away, upon them here, to keep them in suspense, and
afterwards starve them; sending them a-begging all over the nation,
and shipping them off to perish in other countries. Where the
mistake lay is none of my business to inquire.
I reserved this account for this place, because I passed in this
journey over the very spot where the design was laid out--namely,
near Lyndhurst, in the road from Rumsey to Lymington, whither I now
directed my course.
Lymington is a little but populous seaport standing opposite to the
Isle of Wight, in the narrow part of the strait which ships
sometimes pass through in fair weather, called the Needles; and
right against an ancient town of that island called Yarmouth, and
which, in distinction from the great town of Yarmouth in Norfolk,
is called South Yarmouth.
