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.

But the excellence of the method on a proper soil, and conducted by husbandmen, of whom there are few, being readily granted, how, and on what conditions, is this culture obtained?  Why, by a very great increase of labor:  by an augmentation of the third part, at least, of the hand-labor, to say nothing of the horses and machinery employed in ordinary tillage.  Now every man must be sensible how little becoming the gravity of legislature it is to encourage a board which recommends to us, and upon very weighty reasons unquestionably, an enlargement of the capital we employ in the operations of the hand, and then to pass an act which taxes that manual labor, already at a very high rate,—­thus compelling us to diminish the quantity of labor which in the vulgar course we actually employ.

What is true of the farmer is equally true of the middle-man,—­whether the middle-man acts as factor, jobber, salesman, or speculator, in the markets of grain.  These traders are to be left to their free course; and the more they make, and the richer they are, and the more largely they deal, the better both for the farmer and consumer, between whom they form a natural and most useful link of connection,—­though by the machinations of the old evil counsellor, Envy, they are hated and maligned by both parties.

I hear that middle-men are accused of monopoly.  Without question, the monopoly of authority is, in every instance and in every degree, an evil; but the monopoly of capital is the contrary.  It is a great benefit, and a benefit particularly to the poor.  A tradesman who has but a hundred pound capital, which (say) he can turn but once a year, cannot live upon a profit of ten per cent, because he cannot live upon ten pounds a year; but a man of ten thousand pounds capital can live and thrive upon five per cent profit in the year, because he has five hundred pounds a year.  The same proportion holds in turning it twice or thrice.  These principles are plain and simple; and it is not our ignorance, so much as the levity, the envy, and the malignity of our nature, that hinders us from perceiving and yielding to them:  but we are not to suffer our vices to usurp the place of our judgment.