344 A Letter to the Farmers and 
ble publicity, or if I neglected to use my best endeavours to place 
them in that clear point of view which should enable you fully to 
«understand and appreciate them. 
The expediency of manuring arable and pasture lands with 
salt, and of administering the same active and wholesome sub- 
stance to your horses, sheep, and cattle, as a condiment for their 
food, and as an efficacious means of preserving them in health 
and vigour, will form the principal objects which I am anxious to 
point out for your consideration and future practice. 
After a candid and unprejudiced perusal of this letter, you will, 
I trust, carefully examine the body of evidence which will be ad- 
‘duced in the Appendix, and then make such experiments upon 
your own estates, and with your own cattle, as are most likely to 
‘determine and convince you how far such a course of proceeding 
‘may be applicable in your own management. 
The ever-memorable Sully, who was one of the greatest men 
France ever produced, used to say that it ought to be the first 
maxim of a good government to advance agriculture before ma- 
nufactures, and to give to the latter only a secondary rank in the 
state—whereas, Colbert, who was also a great minister, assigned 
to manufactures the first place in the ceconomical order of his ad- 
ministration, and gave the.utmost encouragement to the arts, 
from a persuasion that their prosperity would furnish the only 
means of working up the raw materials which his country pro- 
duced. It is probable, however, that this eminent statesman 
would not have protected the arts at the expense of agriculture, 
if he had considered that the principal utility of manufactures in 
any country arises from the price which they afford to, and the 
market which they procure for, the products of the soil. 
The immortal Sully, in vindication of the opinion which I have 
just quoted, used to say that he had ever preferred the products 
of the soil, which could not easily be ravished from him, to those 
foreign conquests which occupy the attention of most govern- 
ments, but which always excite resentment and jealousy. “A 
large, and an increasing produce of the land,” said he, ‘‘ ensures 
the liberty of the people, while it places foreigners in a sort of 
dependence ; whereas the want of corn, the first necessary of life, 
gives a dependence upon foreigners, who can either furnish the 
commodity, or refuse it. The produce of the land,” continues 
he, ‘* cannot be consumed by strangers but to the profit of the 
inhabitants, that is, by a traffic more advantageous than the pos- 
session of the corn itself—whereas the arts and manufactures 
may possibly be carried off by the artifices of rivals, and pass 
away, together with the artists themselves, into all the countries 
of the world.” 
If these latter sentiments are founded in truth and justice, and 
I believe 
