AGRICULTURE. 
and expenses. The carelessness of profu- 
sion, and, the sordidness of penury, must 
both be avoided with equal caution. A 
fixed sum, formed upon calculations, re- 
sulting from actual experiment, should be 
allotted for the expenses of the house, for 
persona! expenses, for family dress, and other 
necessary demands, to be by no means ex- 
ceeded, and as casual demands will always 
occur, a reserve should always be provided 
for contingencies. This methodical arrange- 
ment cannot be too strongly enforced on 
the young practitioner, who, without it, is 
in danger of inextricable confusion and 
ruin. If the investment on a farm be eight 
thousand pounds, after clearing all expenses 
arising from regular or contingent de- 
mands, and maintaining the establishment 
in liberal but accurate economy, if a hun- 
dred a year be not annually added to the 
occupier’s capital, the concern must de- 
cidedly be a bad one. The addition of one 
hundred and fifty is very far from unreason- 
able. Whatever it be, in general it cannot 
be better employed than in prosecuting 
ascertained modes of improvement upon 
the farm, if it be the property of the oc- 
cupier, or if he is in possession of a long 
lease. 
Attendance at markets and fairs is an in- 
dispensable part of the farmer’s occupation, 
but in a young man is attended with various 
temptations, such as sanguine and social 
temperaments find it difficult to resist. 
Caution, therefore, to such is perpetually 
requisite. Moreover, the society of persons 
in a superior style or rank in life, which, in 
consequence of establishments for agricul- 
tural improvement is easily accessible to the 
young man of vivacity and spirit, cannot be 
cherished without danger. His mind is thus 
alienated from his regular, and compara- 
tively very laborious, and, as it may weakly 
be deemed, humble occupation, and fas- 
tidiousness, discontent, and neglect will 
usurp the place of tranquil and active in- 
dustry. Such intercourses are completely 
beset with temptation, and have often in- 
duced imitation and profusion, neglected 
business, and eventual, and indeed speedy, 
destruction. 
IMPEDIMENTS TO AGRICULTURAL IM- 
PROVEMENTS. 
The want of wise laws on this subject has 
ever been a serious obstacle. The produce 
of land, and the various manures which are 
necessary for fertilizing it, can be easily and 
cheaply conveyed only along good roads 
and navigable canals, and in proportion as 
a country is destitute of these, it is deficient 
in a grand source of national and agricul- 
tural prosperity. Arrangements on these 
topics cannot easily occupy too much of the 
attention, or at least meet with too much of 
the encouragement of the wise statesman. 
And as indefinite advantages might be de- 
rived from positive regulation on these and 
other details, in behalf of husbandly, much 
might also be done in many countries by 
the removal as well as by the enaction of 
laws. Where the husbandman is precluded 
from the best markets, the art of cultiva- 
tion cannot possibly be pushed up to that 
point of maturity which it would otherwise 
acquire : the attainable perfection of this, 
as well as every other art, depending on the 
encouragement it finds, or in no less accu- 
rate, though perhaps more harsh and grat- 
ing language, on the profit it produces. 
The most effectual mode of procuring the 
growth of any article in abundance is to in- 
sure it a reasonable price, and a rapid sale. 
Freedom of exportation from one countiy 
to another affords considerable ! facility for 
these, and promotes, therefore, the object 
which the blindness of former times sup- 
posed to be counteracted by it. Abun- 
dance is ascertained to be secured by the 
very means which the contracted policy of 
departed legislators imagined necessarily to 
defeat it. Such narrow views are, how- 
ever, in general exploded. And though in 
countries where, as in Great Britain, the 
subsistence of the population is inade- 
quately provided for by the natural produce, 
even in the best of seasons, there is less 
reason on this subject for complaint, than 
would operate in other circumstances, it is 
still an invariable and invaluable maxim, 
that no lands can be cultivated to their 
highest point of perfectibility, where re- 
straints are permitted to operate on the dis- 
posal of their produce. 
The operation of the tithe system must 
be considered as one of the most serious 
impediments on the subject under con- 
sideration. This odious and oppressive 
mode of providing for a class of persons, 
whose peculiar duty it is to polish the 
uncouthness of savage man, to inculcate 
on the world the principles of concilia- 
tion and kindness, furnishes a most sin- 
gular dissonancy between the means and 
the end of those who instituted it ; and its 
unmitigated continuance to the present day 
is a reflection on the sagacity, the energy, 
or the patriotism of the British legislature. 
r 
