MEANS OF IMPROVING OUR HUSBANDRY. 61 



tneir country almost a desert. In other portions, 

 where the fertility of the soil has been sedulously 

 preserved for ages, the population has continued 

 prosperous, wealthy, and happy. 



It is undeniably true, that our general system oV' 

 farming is bad ; that, in most parts of our country, 

 the natural fertility of the soil has been gradually 

 diminishing, and its products becoming less ; that 

 the evil is increasing ; and that, without a radical 

 reform, we shall, in the North, not only cease to 

 have surplus products to pay for the foreign com- 

 modities which long habit has rendered necessary 

 to our convenience, but lack a supply even of bread- 

 stuffs for our own population. To what degrading 

 dependance will this course of things in a few years 

 reduce us, unless prompt and efficient means are 

 adopted to check our downhill course in the pro- 

 ducts of agricultural labour! With the finest coun- 

 try in the world, a population almost entirely agri- 

 cultural, exempt from the enormous burdens, as 

 tithes, rents, and poor-rates, which press like an in- 

 cubus upon the agricultural labour of Europe, and 

 dependant on foreign supplies for the means of sub- 

 sistence ! ! The idea is humiliating, is alarming, to 

 all who look to the ultimate prosperity and happi- 

 ness of our country. Our maritime commerce de- 

 pends upon contingencies which we can neither 

 foresee nor control. Venice and Genoa, and Por- 

 tugal and Spain, have each in turn had their " days 

 of commercial prosperity ;" they successively rose 

 to opulence and power, and successively sunk, the 

 victims cf corruption, into effeminacy, vice, and des- 

 potism. Manufactures too, as we have had abun- 

 dant cause to know, are but a precarious dependence 

 for national greatness. Commerce and manufac- 

 tures are the shaft and capital of the social column, 

 of which agriculture constitutes the base ; and with- 

 out this base they can no more withstand the shocks 

 and revolutions of time, than could the short -lived 



