Note 20 — LETTER XXX.

The island is cut up into small properties or holdings, a very much larger proportion of these being occupied and cultivated by the owners themselves than is the case in England. Consequently, as I think, the poor do not suffer as much as in England. Still the times have altered greatly for the worse within the memory of every middle-aged resident, and the change has been wrought chiefly by the regular and frequent communication with London and Paris, but more especially the first, which in the matter of luxuries of the table, has a maw insatiable.20 Thus the Jersey farmer finds that, by devoting his best labour and land to the raising of potatoes sufficiently early to obtain a fancy price for them, very large money-gains are sometimes obtained,—subject also to large risks; for spring frosts on the one hand, and being outstripped by more venturous farmers on the other, are the Jersey farmers’ Scylla and Charybdis.