damaged
seriously the growth of a vegetable, from the sale of which, at the
London markets, the Cornish agriculturalists derived large profits, and
on which (with their fish) the Cornish poor depend as a staple article
of food.

It is by the mines and fisheries (of both of which I shall speak
particularly in another place) that Cornwall is compensated for a soil,
too barren in many parts of the county, to be ever well cultivated
except at such an expenditure of capital as no mere farmer can afford.
From the inexhaustible mineral treasures in the earth, and from the
equally inexhaustible shoals of pilchards which annually visit the
coast, the working population of Cornwall derive their regular means of
support, where agriculture would fail them. At the mines, the regular
rate of wages is from forty to fifty shillings a month; but miners have
opportunities of making more than this. By what is termed "working on
tribute," that is, agreeing to excavate the mineral lodes for a per
centage on the value of the metal they raise, some of them have been
known to make as much as six and even ten pounds each, in a month. When
they are unlucky in their working speculations, or perhaps thrown out of
employment altogether by the shutting up of a mine, they still have a
fair opportunity of obtaining farm labour, which is paid for (out of
harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a week. But this is a
resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of
common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them; and
the cultivation of this, helps to keep them and their families, in bad
times, until they find an opportunity of resuming work; when they may
perhaps make as much in one month, as an agricultural labourer can in
twelve.

The fisheries not only employ all the inhabitants of the coast, but, in
the pilchard season, many of the farm work-people as well. Ten thousand
persons--men, women, and children--derive their regular support from the
fisheries; which are so amazingly productive, that the "drift," or
deep-sea fishing, in Mount's Bay alone, is calculated to realize, on the
average, 30,000_l._ per annum.

To the employment thus secured for the poor in the mines and fisheries
is to be added, as an advantage, the cheapness of rent and living in
Cornwall. Good cottages are let at from fifty shillings, to between
three and four pounds a-year--turf for firing grows in plenty on the
vast tracts of common