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Such are generally the practical methods or processes by 

 which British agriculture has been advanced to its present 

 condition. 



In connection with this improved condition of British 

 agriculture, and the practices it involves, you will excuse 

 me if I advert for a moment to one aspect in which British 

 agriculture may be regarded, which at the present moment 

 is most vitally connected with the interests of the English 

 farmer, and may be neither uninteresting nor uninstructive 

 to you. 



Were an intellectual foreigner, previously unacquainted 

 with Great Britain, with the character of its people, or with 

 its social condition, to be informed regarding this country, 

 that though occupying only a small and thickly peopled 

 corner of Europe, shrouded for many months of the year in 

 fogs and mists, seldom and briefly visited by the fervid 

 sun — never, I may say, by such a sun as now shines upon 

 us — and raising its own grain crops with cost and difficulty 

 to feed its rapidly increasing inhabitants — were he to be told 

 that the Legislature of this country, in which the agricul- 

 tural body is the predominating interest, had thrown open 

 its island harbors to all comers, and trusting to superior 

 energy, perseverance and skill, had invited even the most 

 fertile and favored regions of the globe to a free competi- 

 tion in their own grain markets, fearless of the results ; — 

 apart from all fiscal theories or political views with which 

 my profession and pursuits forbid me to intermeddle, I ask 

 you, if such a foreigner, so instructed, could fail to admire 

 the open boldness, to look with respect on the resoluteness 

 of such a country, or to long for an opportunity to study, 

 not only the character and habits of its people, but the 

 modes of culture practised by them, with so much success, 

 in a region so unfavored by nature. 



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