202 THEORY OF THE POTATO FAILURE. 



as its novelty and importance would make it ap- 

 pear. The diseases of wheat, have, from time to 

 time, been as threatening; and had we as much 

 depended for our food on red clover or carrot or 

 turnip as on the potato, the loss to the grower had 

 ere now been as deeply felt, and the hopes of the 

 consumer had been as darkly clouded. 



The whole circumstances of the potato failure fall 

 in with the course of general laws which men must 

 study for their life, and in which it will be found 

 that no quarrel with the arrangements of providence 

 can be justly entertained. It may seem indeed like 

 a snare laid for mortals, that first a prolific plant 

 should increase the means of subsistence; that next 

 the population should multiply according to the 

 enlarged provision; and that lastly the plant, hav- 

 ing led to the increase of population, should itself 

 dwindle and leave the people to die. But who laid 

 the snare? Providence is coo bountiful in the rich 

 variety of its productions to countenance the sup- 

 position that the Giver of all good ever designed 

 any portion of the human race to live on potatoes 

 alone. The fact of ill health resulting from such 

 fare the very structure of man's frame and the 

 varied bounty of nature's gifts conspire to prove 

 that disorder has been introduced into the economy 

 of nature, when human beings have laid their plan 

 of life so low as that which befits only the lowest 

 of the brute creation. 



Let this plan be carried a certain length, and 

 there proceeds an excess of potato cultivation. But 

 this is none of nature's plan; and with this the laws 



