DEC. 



1 



534 FARM ACCOUNTS, 



gular accounts ; and yet there is not one in a thou- 

 sand who does this. This is among the many in- 

 stances in which the unenlightened situation of the 

 pracftisers of the art is the evident reason for the 

 backwardness in which the art itself is found by any 

 man who searches for the principles deduced from 

 practice, which ought to give it the regularity of 

 cultivated science. 



A few rough memoranda, or figures, to yield a gross 

 account of the general receipt or payment, are usually 

 the greatest exertions that common farmers, who 

 pretend to keep accounts, make in this line. 



The advantages of clear accounts are obvious in 

 every other pursuit in life ; and to conduct those of a 

 merchant by the Italian method of double entry, has 

 been made an essential branch of education for the 

 classes intended for commerce. Men engaged in 

 large speculations, who are not regular in their ac- 

 counts, are always supposed by the prudent part of 

 the world to be in a dangerous situation ; nor is there 

 a greater reproach to a merchant, short of adhial 

 bankruptcy. 



But agriculture is destined to be, in all its detail, 

 an exception to every thing else. Men engage in it 

 without previous education, or even study and in- 

 quiry, and thc'y conduct large concerns in it without 

 those accounts known to be necessary in every other 

 pursuit. With the lowest and most uneducated far- 

 mers this is pardonable : but what excuse have -gen- 

 tlrin -ich a conduct ? 



It should be remembered that experimental agri- 

 culture, or even those ideas more or less detailed 



which 



