204 THEORY OF THE POTATO FAILURE. 



solicited by little labour or skill. But there is 

 given to the soil a law of decreasing fertility, which 

 must be met by an increase of science; and for 

 this attainment men have time whilst they are 

 nourished by an easy bounty, and must proceed, 

 by new inventions of art, to compensate the 

 diminishing fertility of nature. But there is 

 another law of decrease similar to this, and leading 

 to the like effects; there is the decreasing aptitude 

 of the plant to the soil, in consequence both of less 

 favour shown by the ground and of more worms fed 

 by the plant; and which, being at first dependants, 

 become at length so numerous as to assume the 

 attitude of foes and the power of destroyers. And 

 here also ingenuity and industry must be stimulated 

 both to discover the way of the spoilers and to give 

 to the ground a more laborious tillage. Thus it is 

 so ordered that the moral part of our nature is ad- 

 vanced by the necessity and difficulty of providing 

 the things on which we depend for our physical 

 subsistence. The law is good, and the effect will be 

 still to produce the potato, but at somewhat more 

 of cost and to introduce slowly, and therefore 

 safely, a change to a better state of things in the 

 condition of those to whom the potato has been 

 the only staff of bread. The plant is indeed excel- 

 lent in its proper place; and there is no fear for its 

 production to the amount that is really beneficial. 

 But out of its proper sphere it is a curse; and now, 

 as might be expected, the intimation is given that 

 it shall not remain to occupy the only place in man's 

 eye to the exclusion of other gifts, and shall not go 



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