AGRICULTURE. 
pose of it to the most perfect advantage. 
To read, and think, and attend the public 
markets, and regulate accounts, and observe 
what others in the same occupation in the 
neighbourhood, or even at some distance, are 
engaged in, is of far more importance to the 
advance of agriculture and the profit of the 
individual cultivator, than for him to engage 
in those manual operations, which, in conse- 
quence of more practice, are generally per- 
formed with more rapidity and success, by 
common labourers. On urgency of business, 
or as an example to his men, and to give 
their employment that estimation and dig- 
nity, the idea of which will ever render 
them at once more happy and more dex- 
trous in it, it will be extremely proper for 
him to engage occasionally even in these, 
and his education ought always to have been 
such, as to enable him to practise them with 
some degree of skill and neatness, by which 
he will of course be better enabled to judge 
when they are well performed by others. 
But let him consider himself as the manager 
of a grand manufacturing establishment, re- 
quiring peculiar and incessant vigilance ; of 
a concern, in which occurring contingences 
often require a chaDge of plan, in which the 
exercise of judgment is perpetually de- 
manded, and through the want of a sagacious 
and presiding mind the manual labour of 
many, convertible to extreme advantage, 
may easily become productive only of mis- 
chief, or may have substituted for it negli- 
gence, indolence, and dishonesty. This si- 
tuation of continued superintendence is the 
proper situation of the farmer ; and in pro- 
portion as he does not occupy land sufficient 
to require it, he engages in the profession with 
incorrect views, and misemploys his time. 
But whatever this quantity of land may 
be thought to be, differing certainly in rela- 
tion to different individuals, the importance 
bf adequately stocking and preparing what 
is actually occupied is extreme. To unite 
the portion of land necessary to occupy the 
time of the experienced farmer, with the 
complete means of its fertility and improve- 
ment, affords the most auspicious foundation 
for the hope of success. For frequent and 
fine tillage, and abundant manure, which 
are essential to the perfection of husbandry, 
considerable expense is demanded. The 
most skilful servants, the most correct im- 
plements, the most robust cattle are neces- 
sary to produce that improved tilth, which 
is the most productive cultivation, and will 
amply repay the extraordinary expense in- 
curred in obtaining them. The procuring 
of manure in abundance to repair the ex- 
haustion of the soil, and not only keep it in 
heart, but carry it towards that point of fer- 
tility, beyond which, additional expense will 
be incapable of returning proportional pro- 
duce, is also a matter often of extreme diffi- 
culty and cost. The importance indeed of 
adequate means is so obvious, . that it might 
perhaps by some be scarcely thought excu- 
sable to insist upon the subject. But the 
frequent and ruinous neglect of this conside- 
ration will by others be regarded as an am- 
ple justification of enforcing most emphati- 
cally and repeatedly the idea, that the per- 
fection of agriculture can never be attained 
without an unembarrassed and abundant ca- 
pital. With an inadequate capital on a large 
extent of land, the same consequences will 
take place, which formed the most striking 
and decided objection to those little farms, 
which, however strange it may now appear, 
were formerly thought the grand foundation 
for national plenty and perfect husbandry. 
The produce must be carried to market, not 
at the season most advantageous, but almost 
immediately after the harvest, in order to 
enable the farmer to extricate himself from 
immediate embarrassment and prepare the 
soil, inadequately as it must be done in 
these circumstances, for fresh cultivation. 
Commercial monopoly is considerably fa- 
voured by this compulsion upon the farmer 
for selling at whatever price is offered, and 
artificial scarcity though now not much to 
be dreaded in this country, is more likely 
to originate from this circumstance than any 
other. Those grand operations of spreading 
marl over large districts, at the rate of a 
hundred and fifty tons per acre, of convey- 
ing immense quantities of dung from towns 
at the distance of twenty miles, of floating 
meadows at the cost of five pounds per acre, 
of draining lands at the expense of three, 
of paying persons to reside in distant shires 
or even countries, to acquire superior prac- 
tical information, or of improving the breeds 
of sheep and cattle, by giving for the use of 
a single animal for a season, a price at which 
our ancestors would have been absolutely 
astonished and confounded; practices, which, 
happily, have been far from uncommon in 
the British empire, and are daily adding, 
perhaps more than any other cause, to its 
stability and prosperity, have depended en- 
tirely upon abundant capital. Such pro- 
cesses for improvement might as easily be 
expected in the management of those small 
farms, formerly so highly extolled, and now 
so justly in theory exploded; as in the conduct 
