sale, and rise of prices of their produce; and partly because they cultivate with more industry: and that those only who have a capital, venture on large farms and great rents. It does not appear that any very great discoveries have been made in agriculture; the most useful novelty was the introduction of turnips for animals, and potatoes for men. With turnips, large flocks of sheep are kept, which not only furnish meat and wool, but fertilize the land, and fit it for cultivation. During the fifty years which preceded the last, the rise was not near so considerable; wheat, indeed, seems to have fallen from 4s. 5d. a bushel to 3s. 9d.; meat doubled. The rent of land rose half, or fifty per cent. ; and it is worth observing, that landlords found it difficult to get tenants, while now, a lease is no sooner expired, than ten farmers offer to take it. Upon the whole, the nominal increase of prices has been about fourfold in the last hundred years. It is undeniable, that, under such circumstances, a debt of an hundred millions, for instance, represents now only twenty-five millions, and in another century may represent only six. This is an effectual sinkingfund. The one hastens the payment of the debt, the other destroys the debt; it extinguishes without paying it. The people pay L.4,000,000 for the interest on this debt, with the same facility they would have paid L.1,000,000 one hundred years ago; their wheat, their sheep, and their daily labour, bring them four times the sum of money they brought formerly. Taxes are prodigious, but they bear exclusively on the rich, and as nobody is compelled to be rich, he who chooses need not pay taxes. Those who were born to a fortune, or by their talents and industry have acquired one, under the protection of a government vigorous, safe, and free, alone pay for the support of that government; the mere poor pay in fact nothing. This is probably the only country in the world where people make fortunes by agriculture. A farmer, who understands his business, becomes rich in England, with the same degree of certainty as in other professions; while, in most countries, a farmer is condemned, by the nature of his trade, to be a mere labourer all his life. The depreciation of money, or increase of prices, is really indifferent to those who sell, as well as buy. Those only who live upon a fixed income, -the lenders to government, for instance, who buy, but do not sell, are progressively abridged of their accustomed enjoyments, and fall back * By the rich, are meant here all those who live without labour or lucrative profession. gradually into the rear-ranks of society. It must be owned, however, that as they receive an interest of four or five per cent. on their capital, while the land-proprietor does not get more than three per cent. on his, their lot is not so unequal as it appears at first sight. The depreciation operates as a tax on the national debt, on a certain surplus of wealth, with which individuals fill up the annual loans; on the floating capital of the nation, which would otherwise elude taxations easier than any other sort of property. It is in fact the debt which pays the debt. Such is the great corrective principle of the national debt, and the reason of its having been carried so far beyond what was deemed its natural limits, without any material inconvenience. Notwithstanding the loud complaints against taxes and the debt, there is not much real harm done, or danger to apprehend; and as to ruining the nation, which is a very common expression here, it puts me in mind of the carpenter, who, when told by some powerful person, that he would ruin him, answered, very philosophically, through mere ! simplicity, "Thou canst not ruin me, I am a carpenter!" You cannot ruin a nation unless you strew salt on its fields, or dry up its rivers. There is nothing mortal, in a national point of view, but an arbitrary and corrupt administration of justice. A pure and equitable system of law is |
