Corn is absolutely unknown
for the space of fifteen hundred leagues on the coasts of the Glacial
Sea. This food, to which we are accustomed, is among us so precious that
the fear of seeing a dearth of it alone causes riots among the most
subjugated peoples. The corn trade is everywhere one of the great
objects of government; it is a part of our being, and yet this essential
commodity is sometimes squandered ridiculously. The powder merchants use
the best flour for covering the heads of our young men and women. But
over three-quarters of the earth bread is not eaten at all. People
maintain that the Ethiopians mocked at the Egyptians who lived on
bread. But since it is our chief food, corn has become one of the great
objects of trade and politics. So much has been written on this subject,
that if a husbandman sowed as much corn as the weight of the volumes we
have about this commodity, he might hope for the amplest harvest, and
become richer than those who in their gilded and lacquered drawing-rooms
ignore his exceeding labour and wretchedness.
_CROMWELL_
SECTION I
Cromwell is painted as a man who was an impostor all his life. I have
difficulty in believing it. I think that first of all he was an
enthusiast, and that later he made even his fanaticism serve his
greatness. A novice who is fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a
skilful rogue at forty.
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