England, with lands
better adapted to the new husbandry, certainly availed themselves of it,
very much to their advantage. Tull, like a great many earnest reformers,
was almost always in difficulty with those immediately dependent on him;
over and over he insists upon the "inconveniency and slavery attending
the exorbitant power of husbandry servants and laborers over their
masters." He quarrels with their wages, and with the short period of
their labor. Pray, what would Mr. Tull have thought, if he had dealt
with the Drogheda gentlemen in black satin waistcoats, who are to be
conciliated by the farmers of to-day?

I think I can fancy such an encounter for the querulous old reformer.
"Mike! blast you, you booby, you've broken my drill!" And Mike, (putting
his thumb deliberately in the armlet of his waistcoat,) "Meester Tull,
it's not the loikes o' me'll be leestening to insoolting worrds. I'll
take me money, if ye plase." And with what a fury "Meester" Tull would
have slashed away, after this, at "Equivocus," and all his
newspaper-antagonists!

I wish I could believe that Tull always told the exact truth; but he
gives some accounts of the perfection to which he had brought his drill
to which I can lend only a most meagre trust; and it is unquestionable
that his theory so fevered his brain at last as to make him utterly
contemptuous of all old-fashioned methods of procedure. In this respect
he was not alone among reformers. He stoutly affirmed that tillage would
supply the lack of manure, and his neighbors currently reported that he
was in the habit of dumping his manure carts in the river. This charge
Mr. Tull firmly denied, and I dare say justly. But I can readily believe
that the rumors were current; country-neighborhoods offer good
starting-points for such lively scandal. The writer of this paper has
heard, on the best possible authority, that he is in the habit of
planting shrubs with their roots in the air.

In his loose, disputative way, and to magnify the importance of his own
special doctrine, Tull affirms that the ancients, and Virgil
particularly, urged tillage for the simple purpose of destroying
weeds.[9] In this it seems to me that he does great injustice to our old
friend Maro. Will the reader excuse a moment's dalliance with the
Georgics again?

"Multum adeo, rastris glebas qui frangit _inertes_,
Vimineasque trahit crates, juvat arva;...
Et qui proscisso quae suscitat aequore terga
R