[ Hi ] 



for. without the plough and its auxiliary instruments, 

 their fields would foon recur to their original wild 

 ftate, and be overrun with furze, briars, and bram- 

 bles, and fuch unprofitable productions as would be 

 of no ufe or value. The occupier of the latter, is as 

 much bound by his intereft to appropriate his lands 

 to feeding or to the pail, as the other is by necefiity 

 to plant corn ; for when nature has given herbage 

 proper for fuch purpofes, the land is of much more 

 value, and its profits to be acquired with far lefs 

 labour and rifque, than from arable land. 



It is true, indeed, that fome have been fo infa- 

 tuated, as to plough up good meadow and paflure 

 land, and relinquifh a good and certain gain upon 

 a vifionary and abfurd expectation. And to fuch, 

 and fuch only, can the reproof of the ingenious 

 writer of Article IX. in the Third Volume of your 

 papers be applied. All fuch are juflly reprehen- 

 fible : but furely the occupiers of arable land, as 

 fuch, are by no means cenfurable. To expect they 

 fhould make butter and cheefe from land to which 

 nature has denied grafs and herbage, would be a 

 talk of more than Egyptian difficulty. As it is ne- 

 ceflary to have butter and cheefe to eat with our 

 bread, it is full as much fo to have bread to eat with 

 our butter and cheefe ; and the molt certain way of 



obtaining 



