Dr. Johnson mentioned, that the few ancient Irish gentlemen yet remaining have the highest pride of family; that Mr. Sandford, a friend of his, whose mother was Irish, told him, that O’Hara (who was true Irish, both by father and mother) and he, and Mr. Ponsonby, son to the Earl of Besborough, the greatest man of the three, but of an English family, went to see one of those ancient Irish, and that he distinguished them thus:  ’O’Hara, you are welcome!  Mr. Sandford, your mother’s son is welcome!  Mr. Ponsonby, you may sit down.’

He talked both of threshing and thatching.  He said, it was very difficult to determine how to agree with a thresher.  ’If you pay him by the day’s wages, he will thresh no more than he pleases; though to be sure, the negligence of a thresher is more easily detected than that of most labourers, because he must always make a sound while he works.  If you pay him by the piece, by the quantity of grain which he produces, he will thresh only while the grain comes freely, and, though he leaves a good deal in the ear, it is not worth while to thresh the straw over again; nor can you fix him to do it sufficiently, because it is so difficult to prove how much less a man threshes than he ought to do.  Here then is a dilemma:  but, for my part, I would engage him by the day:  I would rather trust his idleness than his fraud.’  He said, a roof thatched with Lincolnshire reeds would last seventy years, as he was informed when in that county; and that he told this in London to a great thatcher, who said, he believed it might be true.  Such are the pains that Dr. Johnson takes to get the best information on every subject[714].

He proceeded:—­’It is difficult for a farmer in England to find day-labourers, because the lowest manufacturers can always get more than a day-labourer.  It is of no consequence how high the wages of manufacturers are; but it would be of very bad consequence to raise the wages of those who procure the immediate necessaries of life, for that would raise the price of provisions.  Here then is a problem for politicians.  It is not reasonable that the most useful body of men should be the worst paid; yet it does not appear how it can be ordered otherwise.  It were to be wished, that a mode for its being otherwise were found out.  In the mean time, it is better to give temporary assistance by charitable contributions to poor labourers, at times when provisions are high, than to raise their wages; because, if wages are once raised, they will never get down again[715].’

Happily the weather cleared up between one and two o’clock, and we got ready to depart; but our kind host and hostess would not let us go without taking a snatch, as they called it; which was in truth a very good dinner.  While the punch went round, Dr. Johnson kept a close whispering conference with Mrs. M’Kinnon, which, however, was loud enough to let us hear that the subject of it was the particulars of Prince Charles’s escape.