2S0 
[Oct. ly 
An Anticipation of the Year 3000, 
rlages; the arch of the spacious tunnel 
ivoul.d have reverberated tlie illumination. 
The whole eartii would have seen no se¬ 
cond or similar work ; it would liave been 
the sportive effort of opulence or trading 
luxury under a new form. 
“ If the church of Sancta Sophia ex¬ 
hibited a cupola, St. Paulas cathedral 
boasted of a dome, superior in ingenuity, 
and in elegant architecture unequalled. 
If Asia invented the earliest looms, 
Britain named with exultation an Ark¬ 
wright, a Bolton, and a Watt, the in¬ 
ventors of machines the most complicate 
in the structure, and the most extraordi¬ 
nary in their powers. If Hetruria, 
Delft, or China, pointed to their porce- 
laine, Staffordshire saw in her Wedgwood 
a taste as classical, furnaces more power¬ 
ful, colours more brilliant and durable, 
and a sale more universal than the com¬ 
merce of the earth had ever witnessed. 
“ IfMacedon planted colonies on the 
Indus ; England and Wales settled their 
sons at the farthest antipodes of New 
South Wales. If the standards of Rome 
located in triumph over the Nile, the 
Oxus, Euphrates, the Danube, and the 
Spey; the dag, or the military colours, 
of Britain have nodded victorious, and 
inspired terror on the St. Lawrence, and 
the Hawkesbury, on the Ganges, the Go- 
davery, and Triucomalee, on the Sierra 
Leone, and the Nile; not to enumerate 
her hardy battles and success on thehun- 
drcd rivers of Europe and America. If 
the fisheries for pearls, or if mines of the 
precious and the useful metals, enriched 
imperial Rome ; greater fisheries, and 
more numerous mines were discovered 
and exhausted by Great Britain in 
either India, in the kindred countries 
of Ireland, Wales, and Caledonia ; and 
mechanical and chemical skill were em¬ 
ployed in them by her, with superior 
effect, and more productive wisdom ! 
China had acquired a high chaiac- 
ter for oriental tillage and ornamental 
gardening: Holland, Brabant, Venice, 
in modern ages, Egypt and Nurnidia 
under the Romans, enjoyed an equal re¬ 
putation for perfect agriculture, and for 
the multitude of their herds and docks. 
But all these nations were distanced by 
the opulent farmers, and the experimental 
graziers of adventurous attd intelligent 
England. A Board of Agricuiture liad 
in that country alone been planned, sup¬ 
ported by a national donation, and pa¬ 
tronised by its pastoral monarch, by its 
active nobles and gentry, by its wealthy 
yeomen, and even by its inferior tenantry. 
Inclosure, drainage, the improvement of 
stock, the rotation of crops, the trial of 
manures, with the thousand peculiarities 
of practice, and excellencies in the art of 
husbandry, were carried to a height ot 
precision, which had been unseen, and 
unattempted, in any other empire. 
Thousands of accurate volumes were pub¬ 
lished on this interesting and prolific 
subject, compared with which, the 
Georgies of Virgil, the Physics of Pliny, 
and of Columella, the Poems of Hesiod, 
and the Farm of Vida, with all the 
agricultural pamphlets of continental Eu¬ 
rope, and of negligent Asia, wfill bear no 
candid competition. And the practice 
of the English equalled their theory, and 
realised their happy speculations ! 
“ To the cultivation of the land, the 
other improvements in the island became 
secondary and subservient. For the 
landed interest th.e longcanal, the finished 
turnpike, the convenient cross-road was 
made; mines were dug to manure the 
ground with lime or marl; morasses were 
drained to lay open a new field for pasto¬ 
ral enterprize; boats were loaded with 
new earth to be exchanged, and to be 
mingled with the barren strata ; coasting 
vessels were built to convey the fruits of 
the earth to the most profitable markets. 
No maximum was ever fixed for the price 
of its grain, no prohibition was ever issued 
against the conveyance of corn to any. 
country, no compulsory measures were 
ever employed by the parliament or the 
crown, against corn-dealers, agents, and 
factors. 
Merchants and bankers, and all the 
monied interest, consolidated a part of 
their gains, or tlie produce of their eco¬ 
nomy, in a landed rental; and the success¬ 
ful adventurer in India or America, was 
frequently seen to repurchase the dissi¬ 
pated estates of his fallen family, and to 
ornament with rustic beauty the man¬ 
sion of his ancestors. The patriotic 
George the Third exhibited an illustrious 
example of personal attention to agricul¬ 
tural pursuits; he was eagerly copied by 
the courtiers, the statesmen, the nobles 
of his age ; ‘and the peasant trod so close 
on the heel of the courtier, that he smote 
his gibe/ Thus, no other nation, in aa 
equal degree and in the same era, attended 
to domestic husbandry, to distant colour- 
zation, to coasting and intermediate 
commerce, to mining, and to manufac* 
turc, to the policy of a free state, to the 
arts of peace, and to the nerves of war. 
“ Tliey vvere a people, however, of 
maniieis peculiar as those of the Chineso, 
