of processes included in the term agriculture, and of the infinite variety of processes included in the term manufactures, it is not an idle labour, if we can show that such a discussion is worthless and can lead to no valuable results. It is not an idle labour to attempt to dissipate an error which affects the commercial policy of most nations, and is a deeply rooted error in the minds of the ill instructed, both rich and poor. It was the opinion of a set of persons who have been called the Economistes, that agriculture was the source of all wealth, and therefore the most important branch of industry. This doctrine was founded on the assumption that all the materials that we use are ultimately derived from the earth. This, however, is not true: the products of the sea, of hunting, of mining, are not due to agriculture, even in the sense in which the advocates of this theory understood the term agriculture and further, a large part of agricultural products receive most of their value from other labour besides agricultural labour. Even corn, the material of bread, as already observed, must undergo a manufacturing process before it becomes bread. But the greatest part of the corn that is produced has little value in the place where it is produced: it obtains its value by being transported to another place where it is wanted, and at a cost which forms a considerable part of its selling price. Lastly, the corn is of no value even when it has thus been removed from one place to another, unless it has been removed to a place where it is wanted by those who are not raising corn, but are producing something to give in exchange for it. The value, then, of the corn depends ultimately on the labour and the wants of those who do not concern themselves about its production.

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If those who possess political power were free from all prejudices and all motives of self-interest, or what they suppose to be their interest, there would neither be encouragement nor discouragement given to any branch of industry, and least of all to agriculture. If taxes must be raised, they would be raised in such way as would least interfere with the free exercise of all branches of industry.

The State would provide for defence against foreign aggression, for the administration of justice, and for all such matters of public interest as require its direction and superintendence. To ascertain what these matters may be and how they are to be done, belongs to the subject of government; and the sphere to which the State should limit its activity cannot be exactly defined. But there is one principle which excludes its interference from many matters; which is this. If men are not interfered with they will employ their labour and capital in the way which is most profitable to themselves; and each man knows better how he can employ himself profitably than anybody else can, or any government can, whether such government is of one or many. Agriculture is no exception to this general principle; and there is no reason of public interest why a government should either encourage it or discourage it. In order that the agriculture of a country may attain its utmost development, it is necessary that it be free from all restraint, and that it also be free from the equally injurious influence of special favour or protection.

But no governments have ever let things alone which they ought not to have meddled with; and agriculture has been subject perhaps to more restrictions than any other branch of industry. The interference with agricultural industry lies deeper than at first sight appears. Land is an essential element of a state: it is the basis on which the structure is raised. Now the political constitution of every country is intimately connected with the nature of the landed property; and if we would really trace the history of any nation from the earliest records to the present time, we must begin with the fundamental notions of the law of property in land. In this country for instance it is easily shown that the present mode in which land is held and occupied is the result of those feudal principles which were established, or confirmed and extended by the Norman conquest of England. The various modes in which land is held by the owner and occupied by the cultivator, the modes in which it may be alienated or transmitted by will or by

descent, the burdens to which it is liable either on any change of owner or in any other way, are all important elements in estimating the degree of freedom which agriculture enjoys. The political constitution of a country also materially determines whether the land shall be cultivated in large or in small portions, whether owned by a numerous body or owned by a few; there may also be positive laws which affect the power of acquiring land or disposing of it; and these circumstances materially affect the freedom of agriculture and its condition. The political constitutions of countries, so far as we know them, have not been the result of design. We of the present generation find something transmitted to us which our predecessors have been labouring to amend or deteriorate; they in like manner received it from their predecessors; but the beginning of the series we cannot ascend to. Still every existing generation can do something towards altering that which has been transmitted to it; and every act of legislation which interferes with the mode in which land is acquired or enjoyed materially affects the condition of agriculture. No sufficient reason has ever yet been shown why a man should not, as a general rule, acquire as much land as he can, and dispose of it as he pleases either during his lifetime or at his death. Without discussing the question, whether a man ought to be permitted to give his land to the church or a corporate body, or to determine for generations to come what persons or class of persons shall enjoy his land, it may be laid down as a safe rule that there are limits within which a man's power over his property in land ought to be circumscribed. But such limits should not in any way limit the productive use that can be made of the land; the object of fixing such limits, whatever they may be, is to prevent any large amount of land from being withdrawn permanently out of the market. In a rich country, where great fortunes are acquired by commerce and manufacturing industry, there are always men who wish to invest money in land, and it is for the public interest that there should be opportunities of making such investments.

The tenure of land in any country may

be unfavourable to the improvement of its agriculture. If the object is to encourage agriculture in the only way in which a State can profitably encourage it, all restrictions that arise from the peculiar tenure of land should be removed. "But the mode in which land is held may have a political character, and this may be an obstacle to the giving to agriculture that freedom which is necessary for its improvement. It might be considered that in this country it would be politically useful to forbid those large accumulations of land in the hands of individuals, a condition which is accompanied with a diminution in the number of small landowners. But if it were wise in some points of view to enact a law that should limit the quantity of land that a man may hold, it would be very unwise in other points of view; and such a law would also easily be evaded. The Agrarian laws of Rome only applied to the Public Land, but among other matters they limited the amount of such land that a man could occupy and use. These laws were continually evaded. But besides this, an injury was done to agriculture, that is, the amount of useful produce was diminished by preventing large capitalists from occupying as much of the land as they pleased, subject to the rent which was due to the State. The specious object of the Agrarian laws was to give small cultivators the use or ownership of a portion of the public land, and thus to rear up a body of independent free agriculturists; for the larger farms were cultivated by slaves. Though these laws were not an interference with private property, as the term is properly understood, they interfered with the profitable employment of capital; and they failed in accomplishing their professed object. Some instances are given under the article Allotments of the gradual decrease of small farms in England and their consolidation into large farms, a process which will certainly take place in all countries where there is no positive obstacle, whenever capital is become abundant. [AGRARIAN LAWS.]

The political constitution of a State may therefore encourage or discourage agriculture: and laws may be from time to time enacted which shall have the same

effect. Such laws have sometimes an object purely political, that is to say, a law may be passed which shall have a direct object, not agricultural, and yet it shall indirectly affect agriculture. Any institution or law which in any way either prevents large masses of land from being owned or cultivated by individuals, or which results in a great subdivision of land among owners and occupiers, has an indirect effect on agriculture. Those who cultivate on a small scale cannot enter into the market in competition with those who cultivate on a large scale. [ALLOTMENTS.] A State which consists solely of small landowners must be a feeble political body, and the amount of surplus produce which can be raised will be small. Such a community, if it has not the resources of foreign commerce, will in seasons of scarcity run the risk of famine. The most profitable size of farms depends on a variety of considerations, but whatever it may be, the profitable measure will be practically determined in a country where land can be freely bought or hired, and where capital and labour are abundant. In such a country, and where there is a considerable extent and variety of surface, it is probable that circumstances will produce farms of every size from the smallest unprofitable holdings to the largest farms which can be managed with profit.

Where land is hired by the cultivator, it is an essential condition to good agriculture that there should be farms to hire which permit and require the employment of large capitals. It is also necessary that he who hires the land shall be able to secure the use of it for a period long enough to induce him to cultivate it in the best way, and to make those improvements the fruit of which cannot be reaped all at once. It is a last and equally important condition that he should not be restrained in his mode of cultivation. Small farms, short leases, and conditions which prescribe or limit the mode of cultivation, will infallibly produce bad agriculture.

The productive power of agriculture is not free in any country when the agriculturist is fettered by restrictions upon the sale of his produce; whether the restrictions are imposed by his own State and

exclude him from selling his produce where he can, or whether they are imposed by another State which refuses to receive his surplus produce. In neither case will agriculture attain the development of which it is capable. In France the free intercourse between the different provinces of the kingdom was once impeded by many restrictions, and corn could not be taken even from one province to another. The consequence was that agriculture was in a wretched condition, but it improved rapidly when the restrictions were removed. The history of all countries shows that the interference with the power of disposing of agricultural produce has been unfavourable to agriculture, and consequently injurious to the whole community. Nor is the agriculture of a country free when the land or its products are subject to heavy taxes, direct or indirect. Such taxes raise the price of agricultural produce, and so far diminish the power of persons to buy it; they also increase the amount of capital requisite for cultivating a piece of land, for the payment of the taxes is not always made to depend on the amount of produce raised, or on the time when the produce is by sale converted into money. Payments the amount of which depends on the amount of produce, may either be in the nature of rent, that is, the amount which a cultivator agrees to give to the owner of the land for the use of it: or they may be payments which the land owes to some person or persons not the owner or owners, and quite independent of the payment due to the landowner; to this second class of payments belong Tithes. The cultivator of the Roman Public Land paid the State a tenth of the produce of arable land, and a fifth of the produce of land planted with productive trees. But even this mode of payment is an obstacle to improvement, for the occupier must lay out capital in order to increase the produce of the land; and it will often happen that he pays the tenth of the produce before he has got back his capital, and long before the outlay brings him a profit. The money payment which a man makes to the owner of land for the use of it, is the value of the produce which

remains after all expenses of cultivation, and all costs and charges incident to the cultivation are paid, and the average rate of profit also are returned to the cultivator: at least this is the general mode in which the amount of rent under ordinary circumstances will be determined. It may therefore be as low as nothing. How high it may be depends on various circumstances. [RENT.]

If the agriculture of a country is free from all restrictions, it may in a given time reach the limit of its productive powers. In a country which has a considerable extent of surface and variety of soil, this limit may not be reached for many centuries, because improvement in agriculture is slower than in almost every other branch of industry. The best lands will be first occupied, and carelessly cultivated, as in America; the inferior lands will in course of time be resorted to, and finally the results of modern science will be applied to improve the methods of cultivation. An agricultural country, or a country which produces only raw products, and has no manufactures, will have reached the limit of its productive powers when it has raised from the soil all that can be profitably raised. Whether it will have , a large surplus of agricultural produce to dispose of or not, will in a great degree depend on the size of the farms; but in either case the country will have attained the limit of its productive powers under the actual circumstances in which the agriculture is carried on.

But a country which also abounds in manufacturing industry may continue to extend its productive powers far beyond the limits of its agricultural produce. Part of the agricultural produce will be food, but when the producible amount of food has reached its limit, the productive power of manufactures has not reached its limit also; and this makes a real distinction between agriculture and inanufactures. Great Britain, for instance, might not be able to raise more food than is sufficient for its actual population, but Great Britain could supply the world with cottoncloth and hardware. A country of any considerable extent with a fair proportion of good soil will always be to a considerable extent an agricultural coun

try, for, under equal circumstances of taxation with other countries, it will always be as profitable to cultivate the good lands of such country as to import foreign grain, the price of which is increased by the cost of carriage and contingent expenses. But a time will come in all countries which contain a large population not employed in agriculture, when foreign grain can be imported and sold at a lower price than grain can be produced on poor soils; and if there is no restriction placed on the importation of grain, experience will soon show when it is more profitable to buy what is wanted to supply the deficiency of the home produce than to attempt to raise the whole that is wanted by cultivating poor soils. No country of large extent with a great population could obtain the whole supply of corn by foreign commerce; such an instance is not on record. But a manufacturing country which has up to a certain point produced all the food that is required for its population, will be stopped short in the development of its manufacturing power if from any cause whatever it cannot obtain an increased supply of food. An increased supply of food and an increased supply of raw produce are the two essential conditions, without which the manufacturing industry of a country is ultimately limited by its power to produce food. If the increased supply of food can be obtained from foreign countries, it is a matter of indifference to all who consume the food where it comes from; and the agriculturist himself, as far as he is a consumer of food, is benefited with the rest of the community by the greater abundance of food caused by the foreign supply and by the increased productive powers of the manufacturer. It is not necessary to determine how the increased supply of food will operate on wages or on profits, or on both it is enough to show, that a time must come when there can be no increase in manufacturing power, if the supply of food is limited to what the country produces; and by an addition to the supply of food an additional power is given towards the production of those articles which have reached their limit because the supply of food cannot be increased.

A country which has already produced from its best and its second-rate soils as much as these soils can produce in the actual state of Agriculture, will begin to import grain from other countries, if there are no restrictions on importation. For capital will be more profitably employed in buying and importing foreign corn from countries where it is abundant than in raising it at great cost from inferior soils at home. It is generally assumed that the country which exports grain will take manufactured articles in exchange, and if there are no restrictions on either side this must be the case; for the manufacturing country does not want the grain more than the agricultural country wants the manufactures. But it might happen that a country which had a very large internal and foreign trade would find it much cheaper to buy annually from graingrowing countries all the corn that is wanted to supply its deficient produce at home, than to attempt to supply the deficiency, or to add to the present stock of food by cultivating very poor soils; and this, even if the grain-growing country should refuse to take a single article of manufactures. The only way, indeed, of actually testing the truth of such a case as this is by experiment; but if commerce were free from all restraint, the importation of grain would become a steady trade, the amount of which would be regulated by the condition of Agriculture in the importing country. If the importing country had brought all the better soils into cultivation, the amount of foreign grain that could profitably be introduced would depend on the productive powers of the exporting country and of the cost of transport. Any improvement in the Agriculture and internal communications of the importing country would tend to check importation: increase of population would tend to increase it. The limit of profitable corn cultivation in the importing country, under its actual circumstances, would be determined by the cost of production in the exporting country, and the cost of transport. The Agriculture of the importing country and of the exporting country would then both be free, so far as restrictions on their commerce are con

cerned, and the consequence of this competition must be favourable to agriculture in both. The profits of the agriculturists in both countries would be always the same or nearly the same as the average rate of all profits in the two several countries; and the profits of the agriculturist of the importing country would not be affected by the profits of the agriculturist of the exporting country, any more than the profits of any other class of persons would be affected.

The free development then of Agriculture in a country requires the admission of foreign grain. If foreign grain is absolutely excluded, land is made to produce grain which would be better employed in some other way, as in pasturage or planting. Corn thus becomes dear; and agriculture is encouraged or protected, as it is termed, to the injury of the mass of the people, and to its own injury also, for experience shows that those branches of industry receive most improvements which are neither restrained nor encouraged; in other words, industry to be most productive to a nation must have no other direction than what the hope of profit will make individuals give it. If foreign grain is not excluded, but admitted on paying certain dues, the evil is much less than in the case of absolute exclusion, provided the duties are not high, and provided they are uniform. For nothing except a uniform duty can regulate the foreign trade and give it that steadiness which is most particularly the interest of the agriculturist. A uniform duty is equivalent, so far as concerns the foreign trade, to an addition to the productive powers of the soil of the importing country. If trade is free, the exporting country can send its grain whenever the cost of production and the cost of transport do not raise the cost price of such grain above that of the grain raised in the importing country. A miraculous addition to the productive powers of the soil of the importing country or a sudden inprovement in its agriculture, without any corresponding change in the exporting country, would at once lower the selling price of grain in the importing country, and diminish the supply from the exporting country. The effect is just the same as