INTRODUCTION. XXIU 



hardly enables them to repair the loss sustained from the 

 calamities of a year. The peasant, everywhere, lives 

 only from day to day, because he has no capital, and 

 his poverty does not permit him either to provide 

 against or repair a misfortune. 



The government of this country has been often occu- 

 pied with the project of clearing those wild lands of 

 which a part of it consists ; it has even made some at- 

 tempts, and been at some expense, to carry these plans 

 into execution, k would have been wiser to excite and^^ 

 encourage the improvement of those lands already under ^^** | 

 cultivation ; and by this course the best results would 

 iqfallibly have been obtained. These enterprises, in a 

 country where the cultivation of good land has not ar- 

 rived at perfection, belong to the province of individual 

 speculation, which never fails to execute them, provided 

 it sees any chance of success. 



Agriculture has for a long time requu*ed a law, which 

 should specially encourage improvements, and effect the 

 clearing of uncultivated grounds ; this law should fix for 

 the future, in a permanent and invariable manner, the 

 taxes on land brought into cultivation, so that they never 

 should be raised on account of their produce or the value 

 which has been bestowed on them by labor and indus- 

 try. The fear alone, that taxation will sooner or later 

 be extended to improvements, is sufficient to turn the 

 current of capital from that all-important employment, 

 and to throw it upon those operations and speculations 

 which, for the most part, employ property in ways that 

 are of no advantage, either to the nation or to the gov- 

 ernment. 



