152 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



reality, have looked upon commerce and manufactures as 

 enemies and rivals to agriculture. This fatal error is re- 

 markably current in France ; it cannot be too much com- 

 bated, as nothing is more hurtful to agricultural interests. 

 In reality, the distinction between agriculture and manu- 

 factures is false : to bring the land into cultivation is also a 

 manufacture, and the transport, the sale, and the purchase 

 of agricultural produce is also a trade. Only this kind 

 of manufacture and commerce, being altogether of prime 

 necessity, can dispense a little more with skill and 

 capital than the others ; but then they remain in a state 

 of infancy; and when these two powerful aids are sup- 

 plied, they become a hundred times more fruitful. Even 

 admitting the distinction which usage puts between the 

 terms, there can be no profitable agriculture without pro- 

 fitable manufactures. This is in some measure a mathe- 

 matical axiom, for commerce and manufactures can alone 

 abundantly provide agriculture with the two most power- 

 ful agents of production which exist namely, markets 

 and capital. 



From the reign of Queen Anne, England visibly takes 

 the lead of France in manufactures and commerce that 

 is to say, in everything ; for this advance supposes and 

 includes all others. After the American War, when the 

 nation, afflicted at the loss of its principal colony, sought 

 compensation for the loss by falling back on' its own 

 resources, the start it took was unrivalled ; it was then 

 that Adam Smith appeared, and immortalised himself in 

 a work which showed the causes of the wealth and great- 

 ness of nations. Then appeared the great inventors, 

 Arkwright and Watt, who seem, as it were, the instruments 

 for practically carrying out Adam Smith's theories ; then 

 William Pitt arose, to bring the same spirit into the 

 administration of public affairs ; finally, Arthur Young 



