ACTUAL IMPROVEMENTS IN ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 157 



It will not do, then, to say that steam has done nothing for 

 agriculture : perhaps no department of industry has been more 

 essentially benefited. In its equalizing the value of landed estate 

 throughout the country, it has conferred immense benefits. A 

 farm, accessible to the great markets by steam conveyance, though 

 two hundred miles from London, is now of equal value as if it were 

 within twenty miles. The farmer near London may complain 

 of this ; but it is proper for the community to remember how 

 many more farms are at a distance from, than how many are near 

 to, London j and how little the interest of a few individuals is to 

 be brought into consideration, compared with the interest of a 

 large community, who are to have the advantages of the ex 

 tended competition. Singular as the result is, however, and 

 contradictory as it may seem to all theories on the subject, it 

 does not appear, in fact, that any parties are injured by the facili 

 ties given to the most distant to reach the market. In respect to 

 all the great interests of society, which are in their nature fluctu 

 ating, or at all dependent on external circumstances, so many and 

 such various elements are intermingled and combined, and so 

 many new conditions present themselves, that the calcula 

 tions of political economists are constantly at fault ; and the 

 results are deeply humbling to the pride of human sagacity. 

 Into what a snarl of misery and confusion would every thing in 

 this world be thrown, if man s providence were substituted for the 

 divine providence ! and so it constantly proves that, just in pro 

 portion as men attempt to interfere with the divine arrange 

 ments, to control the great natural laws of Heaven, and to create 

 a perfectly artificial mechanism for the government of society, 

 they find their plans defeated ; and the certain result is any thing 

 but unmixed or even general improvement. I remember, a few 

 years since, it was confidently said, that, when the great Erie 

 Canal of New York should be finished, by which the agricul 

 tural treasures of the Great West should find an easy transmis 

 sion to the Atlantic, farms in the neighborhood of New York 

 city would become comparatively worthless. Yet, strange to say, 

 they have much increased in value, and are now certain to hold their 

 own. The vast increase of population throughout the country ; 

 the great increase of population in the city of New York, occa 

 sioned, to a considerable degree, by the amount of business 

 which this very canal has produced ; the multiplication of trades 

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