594 
Afjricnltural Statistics. 
speculation did not go on regularly from the commencement of the season to 
the last."* 
A subject whose postulates involve annually such sums as these, 
whose data are the stubborn figures that represent the producing 
and consuming powers of eight and twenty millions of people, is 
surely misconceived as matter for petty calculations of expense 
which count by a few hundreds and thousands on the part of a 
nation whose disbursements in a single war are told in hundreds 
of millions. What do we live for ? Not to feed nor to fight, it 
is true ; yet to see that all are fed, that the first great human 
want is satisfied, and that, with the truest economy which fore- 
sight can devise, is surely an object as deeply important as any 
that can primarily engage the liberal attention of the state, even 
if no results of higher scientific aim depended on the inquiry. 
The fact is that the price of bread-corn probably approaches the 
nearest of any existing thing to an ultimate measure of value. 
' What is a pound ?' is a question which it is a sort of fashion to 
consider unanswerable : its value may depend upon a thousand 
relative circumstances. But a bushel of wheat is one of the 
stubbornest physical facts connected %vith the human creation. 
It is so much flesh and blood, and no more ; so much muscle and 
sinew ; so much labour, so much life. Against other articles of 
exchange it may seem to vary in value from year to year, because 
they vary ; but in point of absolute value, in its intrinsic and 
unalterable relation to human necessity, to the first, the most 
recurring and most enduring of Nature's demands, it varies not. 
It is the ultimate measure of all other measures, and, however 
skilful, however advanced, however scientific the agriculture of 
any country may be considered, if it take no note of its aggregate 
produce, if it leave its grand result uncared for, it falls short 
of the full complement of duty that belongs to it in a really 
civilized community. 
We have before us the statistical returns of the agricultural 
produce of America, Franco, Belgium, Denmark, and of Hun- 
gary, besides those before alluded to of Scotland and Ireland. 
That there may be much of error, of assumption, of oversight 
in all ; that none, unless we may except Belgium and Scotland, 
.approach nearly to what they might be, may be past a doubt. 
Yet the effort is manifest and general, and every state that pro- 
duces a good set of statistics increases the value of all tlie rest. It 
is a work in which though every nation is a whole, yet, as 
in the compound forms of crystallography, every whole is 
but the complement of a greater whole. It may be reasonably 
* Evidence of Mr. L, l/cvi before the Lords' Committee on Agricultural 
Statistics. 
