more than anywhere else does his agricultural sagacity declare itself in
his "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity."[N]

Will the reader pardon me the transcript of a passage or two? "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 is commonly 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 ...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. In most 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 traffic, that, after a course of the most
remitting parsimony and labor, 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."

In confirmation of this last statement, I may mention that Samuel
Ireland, writing in 1792, ("Picturesque Views on the River Thames,")
speaks of a farmer named Wapshote, near Chertsey, whose ancestors had
resided on the place ever since the time of Alfred the Great; and amid
all the chances and changes of centuries, not one of the descendants had
either bettered or marred his fortunes. The truthfulness of the story is
confirmed in a number of the "Monthly Review" for the same year.