It willbe always eligible and expedient to pursue a system of management, com prehending every department of business and expenses. The carelessness of pro fusion and the sordidness of penury, must both be avoided with equal caution. A fixed sum, formed upon calculations, re sulting from actual experiment, should be allotted for the expenses of the house, for personal expenses, for family dress, and other necessary demands, to be by no means exceeded, and as casual de mands will always occur, a reserve should always be provided for contingencies. This methodical arrangement cannot be too strongly enforced on the young prac who, without it, is in danger of inextricable confusion and ruin. If the investment on a ferns be eight thousand pounds, after clearing all expenses arising from regular or contingent demands, and maintaining the establishment in liberal but accurate economy, if a hundred a year be not annually added to the occu pier's capital, the concern must decided ly be a bad one. The addition ofone hundred and fifty is veryfar from unrea sonable. Whatever it be, in general, it cannot be better employed th an in prose outing ascertained modesof improvement upon the farm, if it be the property of the occupier, or if he is in possession of a long lease.
Attendance at markets and fairs is an indispensable partof thefarmer's occupa tion, but in a young man is attended with various temptations such as sanguine and social temperaments find it difficult to resist. Caution therefore to such is per petually requisite. Moreover, the society of persons in a superior style or rank in life, which, in consequence of establish ments for agricultural improvement is ea. sily accessible to the young man of viva city and spirit, cannot be cherished with out danger. His mind is thus alienated from his regular, and comparatively very laborious, and as it may weakly be deem ed, humble occupation. and fastidious ness, discontent, and neglect, will usurp the place of tranquil and active industry.
Such intercourses are completely be. set with temptation, and have often indu ced imitation and profusion, neglected business, and eventual, and indeed spee dy destruction.
Impediments to agricultural improvements.
The want of wise laws on this subject has ever been a serious obstacle. The produce of land, and the various manures which are necessary for fertilising it, can be easily and cheaply conveyed only along good roads and navigable canals, and in proportion as a country is destitute of these, it is deficient in a grand source of national and agricultural prosperity. Ar rangements on-these topics cannot easily occupy too much of the attention, or at least meet with too much of the encou ragement, of the wise statesman. And as indefinite advantages might be derived from positive regulation on these and other details, in behalf of husbandry, much might also be done in many countries by the removal as well as by the enaction of laws. Where the husbandman is preclu
ded from the best markets, the art of cul tivation cannot possibly be pushed up to that point of maturity which it would otherwise acquire; the attainable perfec tion of this, as well as every other art, depending on the encouragement it finds or, in no less accurate, though perhaps more harsh anclgrating language, on the profit it produces. The most effectual mode of procuring the growth of any ar ticle in abundance is to insure it a reason able price, and a rapid sale. Freedom of exportation from one country to another affords considerable facility for these, and promotes, therefore, the object which the blindness of former times supposed to be counteracted by it. Abundance is ascer tained to be secured by the very means which the contracted policy of departed legislators imagined necessarily to defeat it. Such narrow views are, however, in general exploded. And though in coun tries, where, as in Great Britain, the sub sistence of the population is inadequately provided for by the natural produce, even in the best of seasons, there is less reason on this subject for complaint, than would operate in other circumstances, it is still an invariable and invaluable maxim, that no lands can be cultivated to their high est point of perfectibility, where restraints are permitted to operate on the disposal of their produce.
The operation of the tythe system must be considered as one of the most serious impediments on the subject under consi deration. This odiou s and oppressive mode of providing for a class of persons, whose peculiar duty it is to polish the uncouth ness of savage man, to inculcate on the world the principles of conciliation and kindness, furnishes a most singular dis sonancy between the means and the end of those who instituted it ; and its unmitiga ted continuance to the present day is a reflection on the sagacity, the energy, or the patriotism of the British legislature. Regulations, by which those who have no share whatever in the expense of im provement should participate in its advan tages, are not mere topics of theoretical absurdity, but attended with serious de triment in their operation throughout this country, in a moral, a religious, and what is most of all to the present purpose, an agricultural point of view. With all the respect due to the representatives of a mighty empire, and with the most deci ded detachment from all points of vague and general innovation, this important subject cannot be too frequently present ed to parliamentary attention. Human wisdom and human virtue will, it is hoped, be at length found equal to the correction of an absurdity at once so gla ring and so prejudicial.