TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, &c. 151 



What has already been effected, merely by the extended culture 

 of potatoes, and by some most exuberant specimens of corn, are 

 sufficient to prove the surprising change that will soon be pro- 

 duced in the value of this long- neglected island ; a change which 

 will be not less beneficial to the lord's proprietors than to the 

 landholders, and all other classes of the community. 



It is also with gratification I observe, at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 the same energies, and the same pursuits, carrying on under the 

 auspices of his Excellency Sir John Cradock. His observations 

 upon the importance of agriculture, and upon its slow progress 

 in that colony, are so truly applicable to St. Helena, that I shall 

 conclude this paper with an Extract from a Government adver- 

 tisement (in the Cape Town Gazette) dated the 17th of October, 

 1812. This paper contains sentiments exactly similar to those 

 that were connnunicated in the St. Helena Register for October, 

 1812, in Jin Extract entitled " On the Cultivation of the Soil." 

 This coincidence, as to the time of publishing, is not less remark- 

 able, than the coincidence of the subjects ; that two neighbouring 

 colonies, remote from the mother country, which have been so 

 long occupied without having made the smallest advances in the 

 arts of husbandry, should, at the very same time, be roused from 

 inactivity to useful and laudable exertion. 



In the advertisement referred to, Sir John Cradock makes the 

 following observations. 



" It is now established on the authority of the most eminent 

 and enlightened men who have written upon the sulyect, that 

 agriculture forms the true basis of the AYealth of Nations ; and 

 that commerce and manufactures, although powerful auxiliaries, 

 are considerations of secondary importance. Agriculture too, 

 or the cultivation of soil, is naturally the primary object of all 

 emigrations from civilized nations to foreign countries : and such 



