APRlLi 205 



culture. Among the gentlemen of trade who have 

 a mutual understanding and confidence, such ob- 

 jections appear trivial ; but to the cultivator, at a 

 distance from the market, it is a different affair. 

 He writes to a madder merchant to know the price. 

 The answer is, four pounds an hundred ur&ghf. Up 

 he sends his madder, and instead of 4l. receives 

 but 3l. not from a variation in price, but in weight. 

 ft may be said, that the correspondent in London 

 may be in the right. Very true ; but will the 

 countryman believe it ? He thinks himself right, 

 and has no other proof that he is not so, but the 

 interested assertion of the man who buys it. Is it 

 not evident, that in such a case the cultivator will 

 be disgusted, and throw aside a business in which 

 he knows neither the market weight nor the mar- 

 ket price. If encouragement is designed to this 

 culture from any quarter, it should not be exclusive 

 of this circumstance : manufactories should be 

 erected and established, in which the madder could 

 be prepared for any one at so much an hundred 

 weight, and that bv persons not the least concerned 

 in purchasing. Then the cultivator would have a 

 commodity in his hands which he could sell in as 

 simple and fair a way as any other. If nothing 

 of this sort can be effected, all encouragement 

 should be for such a number of acres (and no 

 less) as will answer the expence of a private manu- 

 facture, which would prevent persons being un- 

 guardedly drawn in, by premiums apparently con- 

 siderable, to cultivate a root which, when raised, is 



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