122 Of the Agricultural Si/stern. Bk. iii. 



In agriculture, the abundance of good land would 

 counterbalance the high wages of labour and high 

 profits of stock, and keep the price of corn mo- 

 derate, notwithstanding the great expense of these 

 two elements of price. But in the production of 

 manufactured commodities they must necessarily 

 tell, without any particular advantage to counter- 

 balance them, and must in general occasion in 

 home goods, as well as foreign, a high price com- 

 pared with food. 



Under these circumstances, the condition of the 

 laV>ouring classes of society cannot in point of con- 

 veniences and comforts be so much better than 

 that of the labourers of other countries as the re- 

 lative quantity of food which they earn might 

 seem to indicate; and this conclusion is suffi- 

 ciently confirmed by experience. In some very 

 intelligent Travels through a great part of Eng- 

 land, written in 1810 and 1811 by Mr. Simond, 

 a French gentleman, who had resided above 

 twenty years in America, the author seems to 

 have been evidently much struck with the air of 

 convenience and comfort in the houses of our pea- 

 santry, and the neatness and cleanliness of their 

 dress. In some parts of his tour he saw so many 

 neat cottages, so much good clothing, and so little 

 appearance of poverty and distress, that he could 

 not help wondering where the poor of England 

 and their dwellings were concealed. These ob- 

 servations, coming from an able, accurate and ap- 

 parently most impartial observer, just landed from 



