BEET-ROOT SUGAR. 393 



extend the system to Germany and Russia, we have 

 much pleasure in extracting the following sensible 

 observations from a valuable periodical work: 



' The history of this manufacture in France is an 

 illustration, we apprehend, not of the natural pro- 

 gress of industry and of the arts, but of the effects of 

 a system which counteracts the natural progress of 

 both. Whatever may be the ultimate state of this 

 singular manufacture, in consequence of mechanical 

 and chemical improvements yet unknown to us, it is 

 now only supported by a system of commercial and 

 financial policy, which it is for the interest of all 

 countries to see proscribed in Europe. The people 

 of France were the first to be taught by their own 

 philosophers those principles of mutual intercourse 

 which form the basis of trade. Nearly a hundred 

 years have elapsed since Quesnay and his followers 

 taught his countrymen, that freedom of intercourse is 

 the soul of commerce. But his countrymen have yet 

 to learn that liberty is as necessary to the health of 

 commerce as to the well-being of the citizen; that 

 trade is but an interchange of things produced, and 

 that if France will not take the productions of other 

 countries, other countries will not and cannot take 

 the productions of France. The cultivation of the 

 beet is but one ramification of that system of repul- 

 sion and exclusion which has been adopted in France, 

 to the oppression of her domestic industry, the ruin 

 of her foreign commerce, and the maintenance of false 

 principles in the commercial policy of surrounding 

 countries.'* 



In the course of this volume we have endeavoured 

 to show, incidentally, and without embarrassing the 

 subject with minute details which belong to another 

 branch of inquiry, that at every successive step which 



* Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, No. xii. Edinburgh, 1831. 



