direction of Baron Northenflicht, holds out a prospect of the highest improvements. If, as there can be little doubt, it should realize the flattering expectations the public has formed, it will not ameliorate the condition of the miner, without, at the same time, giving prosperity both to commerce and agriculture.
The latter ought not, on any consideration, to be abandoned. We have inculcated the preference that should be bestowed on the working of the mines, which must engage our particular attention, because they are the sources of our riches; but we ought not to neglect the precautions to which our plains are entitled. To know how to profit by them; to better their quality; to give them the advantages of irrigation; and to facilitate the transport of their productions; such are the principles of the prosperity of our agriculture, from which greater advantages may be derived than our commerce can be made to afford.
The criticism, or applause, of all the ideas exposed in this Dissertation, we leave to the opinion and judgment of our readers. It belongs to the chief magistrate to combine them; to analyze them; and either to stamp them with the seal of his approbation, or to reject and lay them aside. This operation is appropriate to the supreme authority, which, in calculating the abuses and benefits, destroys the former, while it preserves in its integrity each profitable establishment. It is the result of those rapid and delicate perceptions, which at the same time discover the end and the means, the resources and the obstacles, the facilities and the inconveniences, and which, being the effect of a natural talent, are not to be acquired by precepts.
