A Discourse on Agriculture. xiii 



ed and saved from the almost universal destruction of our 

 race, was a Husbandman ; destined to repeople the earth ; 

 and to practice and diffuse his invaluahle and all essential art, 

 as one the most necessary to the support and prosperity of 

 the succeeding inhabitants of the renovated world. 



On us, whose happy lot is cast in a free country, the 

 extension and encouragement of agricultural improvement, is 

 most impressively incumbent. J\Eontesquieu has, with truth, 

 observed, that < l countries are not cultivated in proportion to 

 their fertility, but to their liberty." The Athenians, 

 among the first of the Greeks who acquired a free govern- 

 ment and the polish of civilization and science, were famed 

 for their knowledge in agriculture. But alas ; their coun- 

 try, which still continues to be scourged by ruthless despo- 

 tism, brought on at first by their abuse of liberty, in place of 

 smiling in its once exuberant plenty, now weeps over its long 

 lost prosperity . Its dreary desarts still contain the ruins of 

 its former splendor; which remain, not only mouldering 

 monuments for painful reflection and salutary instruction to 

 all people, but solemn warnings to ws, who have evidenced 

 some strong similitudes of private character and public pro- 

 pensities ; whilst we possess the rich pearl, which they had 

 wantonly and licentiously thrown away ! Their freedom has 

 passed from them ; and their agriculture along with it. 



Xenophon, a distinguished Athenian, a great captain and 

 celebrated historian, who traversed vast regions of the old 

 world, and led the Grecian armies, in, to them a ruinous, but 

 to him, personally, a highly honourable, foreign war, has many- 

 ages ago remarked that " agriculture is the nursing mo- 

 ther of the arts. For, where it succeeds prosperously, there 

 the arts thrive ; but where the earth necessarily lies unculti- 

 vated, there the other arts are extinct."* 



In the early periods of the Roman Republic, when liberty 

 was a substantial blessing, and not an empty sound ; the 

 highest praise that could be given to any citizen, was, to say 



* See Bath Society papers— out of which I have taken some thoughts and 

 facts. 



