In that case, my opinion is this: Whenever it happens that a man can claim nothing according to the rules of commerce and the principles of justice, he passes out of that department, and comes within the jurisdiction of mercy. In that province the magistrate has nothing at all to do; his interference is a violation of the property which it is his office to protect. Without all doubt, charity to the poor is a direct and obligatory duty upon all Christians, next in order after the payment of debts, full as strong, and by Nature made infinitely more delightful to us Pufendorf, and other casuists, do not, I think, denominate it quite properly, when they call it a duty of imperfect obligation. But the manner, mode, time, choice of objects, and proportion are left to private discretion; and perhaps for that very reason it is performed with the greater satisfaction, because the discharge of it has more the appearance of freedom,—recommending us besides very specially to the Divine favor, as the exercise of a virtue most suitable to a being sensible of its own infirmity.
The cry of the people in cities and towns, though unfortunately (from a fear of their multitude and combination) the most regarded, ought, in fact, to be the least attended to, upon this subject: for citizens are in a state of utter ignorance of the means by which they are to be fed, and they contribute little or nothing, except in an infinitely circuitous manner, to their own maintenance. They are truly fruges consumere nati. They are to be heard with great respect and attention upon matters within their province,—that is, on trades and manufactures; but on anything that relates to agriculture they are to be listened to with the same reverence which we pay to the dogmas of other ignorant and presumptuous men.
If any one were to tell them that they were to give in an account of all the stock in their shops,—that attempts would be made to limit their profits, or raise the price of the laboring manufacturers upon them, or recommend to government, out of a capital from the public revenues, to set up a shop of the same commodities, in order to rival them, and keep, them to reasonable dealing,—they would very soon see the impudence, injustice, and oppression of such a course. They would not be mistaken: but they are of opinion that agriculture is to be subject to other laws, and to be governed by other principles.
A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen into than that the trades of agriculture and grazing can be conducted upon any other than the common principles of commerce: namely, that the producer should be permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible profit which without fraud or violence he can make; to turn plenty or scarcity to the best advantage he can; to keep back or to bring forward his commodities at his pleasure; to account to no one for his stock or for his gain. On any other terms he is the slave of the consumer: and that he should be so is of no benefit to the consumer. No slave was ever so beneficial to the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages. The consumer, if he were suffered, would in the end always be the dupe of his own tyranny and injustice. The landed gentleman is never to forget that the farmer is his representative.
It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the farmer. The farmer's capital (except in a few persons and in a very few places) is far more feeble than commonly is imagined. The trade is a very poor trade; it is subject to great risks and losses. The capital, such as it is, is turned but once in the year; in some branches it requires three years before the money is paid: I believe never less than three in the turnip and grass-land course, which is the prevalent course on the more or less fertile sandy and gravelly loams,—and these compose the soil in the south and southeast of England, the best adapted, and perhaps the only ones that are adapted, to the turnip husbandry.
It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, counting the value of his quick and dead stock, the interest of the money he turns, together with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does make twelve or fifteen per centum by the year on his capital. I speak of the prosperous. In most of the parts of England which have fallen within my observation I have rarely known a farmer, who to his own trade has not added some other employment or traffic, that, after a course of the most unremitting parsimony and labor, (such for the greater part is theirs,) and persevering in his business for a long course of years, died worth more than paid his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in nearly the same equal conflict between industry and want, in which the last predecessor, and a long line of predecessors before him, lived and died.
Observe that I speak of the generality of farmers, who have not more than from one hundred and fifty to three or four hundred acres. There are few in this part of the country within the former or much beyond the latter extent. Unquestionably in other places there are much larger. But I am convinced, whatever part of England be the theatre of his operations, a farmer who cultivates twelve hundred acres, which I consider as a large farm, though I know there are larger, cannot proceed with any degree of safety and effect with a smaller capital than ten thousand pounds, and that he cannot, in the ordinary course of culture, make more upon that great capital of ten thousand pounds than twelve hundred a year.
As to the weaker capitals, an easy judgment may be formed by what very small errors they may be farther attenuated, enervated, rendered unproductive, and perhaps totally destroyed.
This constant precariousness and ultimate moderate limits of a farmer's fortune, on the strongest capital, I press, not only on account of the hazardous speculations of the times, but because the excellent and most useful works of my friend, Mr. Arthur Young, tend to propagate that error (such I am very certain it is) of the largeness of a farmer's profits. It is not that his account of the produce does often greatly exceed, but he by no means makes the proper allowance for accidents and losses. I might enter into a convincing detail, if other more troublesome and more necessary details were not before me.
This proposed discretionary tax on labor militates with the recommendations of the Board of Agriculture: they recommend a general use of the drill culture. I agree with the Board, that, where the soil is not excessively heavy, or incumbered with large loose stones, (which, however, is the case with much otherwise good land,) that course is the best and most productive,—provided that the most accurate eye, the most vigilant superintendence, the most prompt activity, which has no such day as to-morrow in its calendar, the most steady foresight and predisposing order to have everybody and everything ready in its place, and prepared to take advantage of the fortunate, fugitive moment, in this coquetting climate of ours,—provided, I say, all these combine to speed the plough, I admit its superiority over the old and general methods. But under procrastinating, improvident, ordinary husbandmen, who may neglect or let slip the few opportunities of sweetening and purifying their ground with perpetually renovated toil and undissipated attention, nothing, when tried to any extent, can be worse or more dangerous: the farm may be ruined, instead of having the soil enriched and sweetened by it.