22 



Sir, the one of these dreams is as likely to be fulfilled 

 in our favor as the other. We may as well hope that the 

 constellations of the other hemisphere will stoop to make 

 obeisance to our constellation, and that the kings and 

 queens of the earth will bend and do homage to our re- 

 public, as that the sheaves of other lands will stand round 

 about and make obeisance to our sheaf, and the agriculture 

 of the world acknowledge its dependence upon our agri- 

 culture. 



Indeed, the fulfilment of the one dream, as I have already 

 suggested, would speedily involve the fulfilment of the 

 other. No great nation can ever maintain its political in- 

 dependence, except by sufferance and courtesy, when it has 

 become absolutely dependent on another nation for its 

 food. As to Great Britain, moreover, to whom our farmers 

 have always been pointed for their most hopeful market, 

 and to whom, I doubt not, they may always look confi- 

 dently for an occasional demand for some varieties of agri- 

 enltuial produce, it is an admitted fact that she can feed 

 herself, as it is, in all ordinary seasons ; and when she shall 

 have brought all her reserve land into cultivation, and re- 

 claimed all her swamps and bogs and marshes, and esta- 

 blished a better state of things for poor Ireland, and applied 

 the modern modes of systematic, scientific culture to the 

 whole soil of the United Kingdom, she may defy the farm- 

 ers of the world. The whole notion of John Bull's sub- 

 mitting to be fed or foddered at our rack and out of our 

 manger, is as visionary as that of Brother Jonathan's put- 

 ting his neck back again under the old British yoke. 



Nature herself, indeed, presents an obstacle which settles 

 the question for ever. It has been calculated by the late 

 lamented Mr. Porter, in his Progress of the British Nation 

 (a work of standard authority), that " to supply the United 

 Kingdom with the simple article of wheat would call for 

 the employment of more than twice the amount of ship- 



