184 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



And here also ingenuity and industry must be stimu- 

 lated 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 

 advanced by the necessity and difficulty of providing 

 the things on which we depend for our physical sub- 

 sistence. 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 excellent in its pro- 

 per 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 re- 

 main to occupy the only place in man's eye to the 

 exclusion of other gifts, and shall not go on to be 

 the too easy and sole subsistence of millions, to per- 

 petuate their generations in the misery of physical 

 weakness and moral degradation. 



Before this new malady occurred there appeared 

 a vast amount of human life thrown into abject de- 

 pendence on the thriving of a single root always 

 surpassing by their numbers the limits of its largest 

 supplies, and either learning the patience of famine 

 or being tempted to steal, and, under the one engros- 

 sing care of maintaining existence, unable to look 

 higher for the consolations of a salutary affliction or 

 the hope that purifies by a heavenward aim : and 

 hence neither will piety nor patriotism complain 

 though no specific or effectual cure of this malady 

 should be found; for then it will appear that in the 



