PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE. 147 



that much progress has been made in determining many ques 

 tions which have vexed men s minds for centuries. I confess, 

 when I was in the Bodleian library, at Oxford, that immense 

 repository of the labors of so many burning brains and aching 

 hearts, with its five hundred thousand volumes, and considered 

 that, beyond all question, more than three hundred thousand of its 

 thick octavos and ponderous quartos and folios were commenta 

 ries upon the Scriptures, or discussions of disputed questions in 

 theology, and yet, in respect to most of them, that we are still at 

 sea, and no land in sight, I could not escape the conviction, that 

 here, too, man is still in leading-strings, and has yet scarcely 

 taken &quot; the first steps of infancy.&quot; 



In respect to manufactures and commerce, if we compare the 

 common operatives in either of these departments with those of 

 the same class in agriculture, the laborers in the mills, or the 

 sailors on boardship, with the common laborers on the farm, we 

 shall find no great advantage, in intellectual progress, which the 

 one has over the other ; but, again, if we compare the highest 

 class of farmers with the highest class of merchants and manu 

 facturers, it will certainly be no disparagement to the latter 

 classes to say that they are not in advance of the best-informed 

 agriculturists ; and that agriculture is now as much a matter of 

 the mind, as much a matter of intellectual observation and in- 



v/ould have been a simple trespass, and she would have been mulcted in a fine 

 only : as it was, however, it was & felony or crime, and she was punished accord 

 ingly. I could easily imagine the amazement of the poor unfortunate creature 

 at so subtile and philosophical a distinction. I must add, though it may seem out 

 of place, that a criminal prosecution for an offence of this nature can have no 

 other effect than to engender a bitter malignity on the part of the poor towards the 

 powerful, and that the generally severe administration of penal justice upon the 

 humble and defenceless, (not, I must confess, peculiar to England,) when the large 

 flies so often break through the cobweb of the law, and escape by intrigue or in 

 fluence, can have little effect in producing reformation ; and its main tendency 

 must be to nourish, on the part of the lower classes, a deep resentment of the 

 partiality, and an utter hatred of the power, to which they are subjected. A 

 paternal administration of justice is not, of course, to be expected ; but what an 

 infinite amount of guilt and wretchedness would be saved, if the circumstances of 

 the guilty could be more mercifully considered ; especially if humanity and pub 

 lic justice could be more exerted in preventing rather than in punishing crime ; 

 above all, if society itself, by its omissions or its institutions, were not, in too 

 many cases, the tempter, the minister, and the pander to crime, as well as its 

 terrible avenger! 



