132 History of the English Landed Interest. 



produce ; the revenue of the proprietors would be less than 

 it otherwise might be by ten millions a year only ; but the 

 revenue of the great body of the people would be less than it 

 otherwise might be by thirty millions a year, deducting only 

 what would be necessary for seed." ^ 



Save here and there in the works of the economists who 

 were contemporaries of Quesnai, we shall find that the mer- 

 cantilists' system had by now become confined to the Italian 

 school of political thought. Genovesi, Beccaria, and others 

 still championed this moribund philosophy ; but in France and 

 England the theories of the agricultural economists, as we 

 shall see throughout this chapter, had become prevalent. And 

 yet before that the well-balanced reasoning and the compre- 

 hensive teaching of Smith and Ricardo had educated the public 

 mind to strike a happy mean between the extravagancies of 

 the mercantilist and those of the agriculturist, it was not 

 altogether beneficial for Great Britain that the prominence 

 attributed by the former to commerce should be utterly 

 ignored. " Trade," said Dr. Davenant, " is the living fountain 

 whence we draw all our nourishment ; it disperses that blood 

 and those spirits through all the members by which the body 

 politic subsists." " The greatness of a State," said Hume, 

 " and the happiness of its subjects, are generally allowed to 

 be inseparable with regard to commerce." AVithout such 

 counteracting doctrines as these, the agriculturist party, in 

 their revulsion of feelings regarding the source of wealth, 

 might have altogether ignored the important relationship of 

 commerce to the circulation of the produce of labour. 



On the other hand, it was well to believe that one of the 

 strongest proofs of approaching national decay was the decline 

 of agriculture. This was no new creed, for Columella had 

 sounded the knell of his countrymen's greatness as soon as he 

 began to see Roman husbandry ridiculed and neglected.^ Nor 

 was it otherwise than prudent for the nation to realise that 

 no people could in general be secure of its independence, unless 

 the soil furnished a sufficiency of the necessaries of life for its 



* Wealth ofNationn, Bk, V. cli. ii. p. 257, 5th ed, 



* De lie Rustica praf. et lib., etc., 1 and c. 3. 



