62 APPENDIX.
are employed in manufactures, or in making up manu-
factured articles, as shoes and clothes, &c. with which
the market is already supplied, they must interfere with
the industry of other workmen, who would soon be
reduced to poverty, and that, consequently, mischief
rather than good would arise from such a system.
Whereas, while there are such extensive tracts of
waste land all over the kingdom, and more especially
in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis, and while we
are under the necessity of importing food from other
countries, our agriculture cannot be too much extended.
" Besides mere digging, a variety of operations might
be executed by manual labour, as collecting manure,
transporting it in barges up the river, conveying it to
the field on portable iron railways, transplanting the
crops, hoeing and weeding them, cutting down or reap-
ing them, threshing by hand mills, and grinding the
wheat by the flour mills, so strongly recommended by
the Society of Arts. In short, the employment which
agriculture furnishes, are numerous and unceasing."
Captain Brenton's opinion may be seen in an answer
to Mr. Wilmot Horton's Treaties in favour of emigra-
tion, and in other Tracts, and in which he shows the
absolute necessity of finding employment for many
thousands of idle dangerous men, and of destitute boys
in the Metropolis, of which he supposes that there are
fifteen thousand, who have no home, but are brought
up and practised in the commission of every species
of vice and inquity.