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providing unseen means of subsistance; and it is in this that we find the cheering hope that at no period, however distant, even when the whole earth shall have been covered with inhabitants, shall mankind languish for lack of food. As they increase in number, so will they go on perfecting their contrivances; every succeeding generation may labour under some new difficulty, but so will it be endowed with the faculty of releasing itself from it.
"All things in the world are originally the produce of the ground; what we call commodities is nothing but land severed from the soil. Man deals in nothing but earth. The merchants are the factors of the world, to exchange one part of the earth for another. Agriculture is, therefore, the nurse of the arts, the parent of population, and the promoter of what is most cstimable in human character, or important in society. Of all the common arts, it contributes most obviously and powerfully to individual and social support and happiness—to it all the arts refer, and from it they derive the materials of their operations. The labours of the field are calculated to breed a hardy, strong, temperate, and industrious class of men. Without thinking that the heathen legends were altogether allegorical, we may suppose that the poets did not without meaning, assign the culture of the earth as the appropriate employment of mankind during the golden age, the reign of peace, innocence, and happiness. The benign influence of this occupation upon the ancient Romans is well known. Not only were the armies of Rome formed and recruited from the fields, her legislators, her generals, her dictators, were often called from the plough to preside in the senate, or lead forth the levies to victory. In our own country, no classes of the community are more respectable, independent, and intelligent, than the yeomen of England and the peasantry of Scotland. As they promote the fixed wealth, so they constitute a considerable portion of the aggregate wisdom, virtue, and valour of the nation." Farming, the primitive natural business of man, is probably the most healthful, both for body and mind. It places us, as it were in daily contact
