AGRICULTURE AS A COMMERCIAL PURSUIT. 295 



used to say &quot; she was always sorry to hear that a man had made 

 a good bargain, because she knew, in that case, that some person 

 must have made a poor one.&quot; It is not so in agriculture. The 

 more a man increases his wealth by increasing the products of 

 the earth by a skilful cultivation, so much the more is the whole 

 community benefited, excepting only where human laws inter 

 pose to intercept the widest possible diffusion of the bounties of 

 Heaven. 



Agriculture, in order to excellence, requires as much the 

 stimulus of profit as any other pursuit in life. In England and 

 Scotland, it has had that stimulus. It has had governmental 

 protection and indulgence, the propriety and justice of which are 

 questionable with many men of distinguished wisdom, observa 

 tion, and patriotism, and the expediency of which is capricious, 

 being dependent upon circumstances ever liable to fluctuation 

 and change. The protection which it has received has been in 

 laws prohibiting, under heavy duties, the importation of agricul 

 tural produce from foreign countries, and affording relief from 

 various forms of specific taxation, to which other professions or 

 conditions are subjected. The horses, dogs, servants, and 

 carriages, of all other classes of the community here are taxed ; 

 but those of the farmer are exempted from taxation. In the tax 

 upon income, the farmer s income is fairly assumed from the rent 

 which he pays; but in levying the assessment, only half his rent 

 is reckoned, so that a farmer paying in fact 400 rent, would 

 be considered, for the purpose of taxation, as paying only 200. 

 In some respects, it must be confessed that what is called &quot; pro 

 tection &quot; is of a suicidal character. A duty is laid, for example, 

 upon imported clover-seed, whereas the amount produced in the 

 country, or likely to be produced under all the encouragement 

 which its cultivation receives, bears a very small proportion to 

 the amount used by the farmers, and used in fact by no other 

 persons ; so that the duty paid upon this article is a heavy tax 

 upon the many farmers, for the exclusive benefit of the few. 

 Great complaint is likewise made, by the farmers, of the intro 

 duction of fat cattle from abroad, which come into injurious com 

 petition with their own stock, and of the admission of foreign 

 salted provisions. At the same time, the very provision upon 

 which these cattle might, if imported lean, be fatted at home, is 

 prohibited. The Indian corn from the United States can be 



