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Tuesday, either at St. James's, or Buckingham House, it could not be far removed from the mediate, or the intermediate observation of those lords, who, as Voltaire has it, are "powdered in the tip of the mode, and know exactly at what hour the King rises and goes to bed." Are we to suppose then, that the Sovereign, while assimilating his
and forests in his own bands, on a farming system,[subnote 1] in order to give a respectability to the profession of farming, and that this idea had been seconded and followed up most beneficially for the country by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, Mr. Coke, and several others. Since his Majesty's illness, it had been judged proper by the Prince Regent, to give a power of attorney to three persons to take these farms under their trust, and to receive the rents from the tenants in the same way as had always been done; so that the whole, in case his Majesty should providentially recover, might be restored as nearly as possible in the same state.
- ↑ There seems some want of precision in the above account; because what a land-owner retains in his own bands he is understood to farm himself, in distinction from that portion which is tenanted. The beneficial example his Majesty set to the nobility and country gentlemen of England had its full effect, and reminds as of what is related of the usages among the Chinese, whose dense population requiring the most marked attention to agriculture, the Emperor is accustomed once a year to descend from his celestial consequence, and hold the plough himself.—Our Sovereigin was diverted with the epithet of "Farmer George" which got into circulation shortly, and which, said they, be first learned from meeting a Peasant, early in the morning, driving some sheep towards Windsor. The King stopped to look at them, and asked who they were for?—for Farmer George was the answer.—"And who is Farmer George, I thought I knew all the Farmers in this neighbourhood?—He lives at that Great House yonder," pointing to the Castle, "and zum volks calls un the King, but we calls un Farmer George."—In connexion with this, an humourous print of small price, might be seen in that day, called "Farmer George and his Wife."
