ible, no one straw ought to have another
lying upon it, or across it. If the sun be clear, it will require to lie
twenty-four hours thus, then to be turned, and lie twenty-four hours on
the other side. If the sun be not very clear, it must lie longer. But the
numerous sowings which I have mentioned will afford you so many chances,
so many opportunities of having fine weather, that the risk about weather
would necessarily be very small. If wet weather should come, and if your
straw remain out in it any length of time, it will be spoiled; but,
according to the mode of sowing above pointed out, you really could stand
very little chance of losing straw by bad weather. If you had some straw
out bleaching, and the weather were to appear suddenly to be about to
change, the quantity that you would have out would not be large enough to
prevent you from putting it under cover, and keeping it there till the
weather changed.

231. HOUSING THE STRAW. When your straw is nicely bleached, gather it up,
and with the same string that you used to tie it when green, tie it up
again into little sheaves. Put it by in some room where there is no
_damp_, and where mice and rats are not suffered to inhabit. Here it is
always ready for use, and it will keep, I dare say, four or five years
very well.

232. THE PLATTING. This is now so well understood that nothing need be
said about the manner of doing the work. But much might be said about the
measures to be pursued by land-owners, by parish officers, by farmers, and
more especially by gentlemen and ladies of sense, public spirit, and
benevolence of disposition. The thing will be done; the manufacture will
spread itself all over this kingdom; but the exertions of those whom I
have here pointed out might hasten the period of its being brought to
perfection. And I beg such gentlemen and ladies to reflect on the vast
importance of such manufacture, which it is impossible to cause to produce
any-thing but good. One of the great misfortunes of England at this day
is, that the land has had _taken away from it those employments for its
women and children which were so necessary to the well-being of the
agricultural labourer_. The spinning, the carding, the reeling, the
knitting; these have been all taken away from the land, and given to the
Lords of the Loom, the haughty lords of bands of abject slaves. But let
the landholder mark how the change has operated to produce his ruin. He
must have the labour