On promoting Useful Knowledge. 513 



an act, suppressing those professorships, which are at pre- 

 sent sinecures, or of little real utility, and establishing in 

 their room, those of agriculture (* 4 ). 



4. Improvement of Veterinary Knowledge. Some encou- 

 ragement has been given, by an annual grant, to the acqui- 

 sition and diffusion of veterinary knowledge ; a deficiency in 

 which, had proved so fatal to the public interest. It is not 

 improbable, that for every pound of public money that has 

 been in this way laid out, a thousand have been saved in our 

 national expenditure, in the article of horses alone, employ- 

 ed in the cavalry and artillery. It would be desirable, in- 

 deed, that schools for veterinary knowledge, should be esta- 

 blished in all the principal towns in the kingdom ; and that 

 the preservation of every species of our valuable stock of 

 domestic animals, should no longer be left to ignorance or 

 quackery, but that the practice to be adopted, in the ma- 

 nagement of their disorders, should be grounded on scienti- 

 fic principles. 



SECT. V. To give a Preference to Domestic Agricultural 

 Productions in the Home Market. 



THJS is peculiarly necessary, both to preserve the coun- 

 try from famine, and to render it independent of other na- 

 tions for the necessaries of life. To permit the industry of 

 any foreign nation, to enter into competition with our own 

 domestic industry, or productions, is not allowed in the ma- 

 nufactures of linen or cotton, and many other articles, and 

 ought still less to be suffered in that of corn. 



If two nations, similarly circumstanced in regard to soil, 

 climate, labour, and circulation, were to give each other 

 reciprocal liberty of trading, the system, on the whole, might 

 not be materially injurious to either ; but to place in com- 

 petition the industry of one country, which has a great na- 

 tional debt, and heavy taxes, and where the price of labour 

 must consequently be high, with that of an indefinite num- 

 ber of other countries, which, with better climates and more 

 fertile soils, are not subject to the same burdens, would be 

 highly inexpedient. Besides, no country that has sufficient 

 extent of surface, and can by any exertion produce food for 

 itself, would act wisely, to allow itself to be dependent on 

 others for subsistence. 



The equitable principle, therefore, is, to impose a pro- 

 tecting duty on all foreign agricultural productions, until 



