Ch. viii. Of the Agricultural Si/stem. 129 



America is perhaps the only modern instance of the 

 fair operation of the agricultural system. In every 

 country of Europe, and in most of its colonies in 

 other parts of the world, formidable obstacles still 

 exist to the employment of capital upon the land, 

 arising from the remains of the feudal system. But 

 these obstacles which have essentially impeded 

 cultivation have been very far indeed from pro- 

 portionably encouraging other branches of in- 

 dustry. Commerce and manufactures are neces- 

 sary to agriculture ; but agriculture is still more 

 necessary to commerce and manufactures. It 

 must ever be true that the surplus produce of the 

 cultivators, taken in its most enlarged sense, 

 measures and limits the growth of that part of 

 the society which is not employed upon the land. 

 Throughout the whole world the number of manu- 

 facturers, of merchants, of proprietors, and of per- 

 sons engaged in the various civil and military pro- 

 fessions, must be exactly proportioned to this sur- 

 plus produce, and cannot in the nature of things 

 increase beyond it. If the earth had been so 

 niggardly of her produce as to oblige all her inha- 

 bitants to labour for it, no manufactures or idle 

 persons could ever have existed. But her first 

 intercourse with man was a voluntary present, 

 not very large indeed, but sutficient as a fund for 

 his subsistence till he could procure a greater. 

 And the power to procure a greater was given to 

 him in that quality of the earth by which it may 

 "be made to yield a much larger quantity of food, 

 and of the materials of clothing and lodging, than 



VOL. II. Iv 



