his land unless he brought to, and consumed on it, the same weight
of other meat. This was true agricultural and chemical economy. But
when the people were removed from country to town, when the produce
grown in the former was consumed in the latter, and the refuse
which contained the elements of fertility was not restored to the
soil, but swept away by the river, a process of exhaustion took
place, which has been met in degree by the use of imported and
artificial manures. The sewage question is taken up mainly with
reference to the health of towns, but it deserves consideration in
another aspect--its influence upon the production of food in the
nation.

An exhaustive process upon the fertility of the globe has been set
on foot. The accumulations of vegetable mould in the primeval
forests have been converted into grain, and sent to England,
leaving permanent barrenness in what should be prolific plains; and
the deposits of the Chincha and Ichaboe Islands have been imported
in myriads of tons, to replace in our own land the resources of
which it is bereft by the civic consumption of rural produce.

These conjoined operations were accelerated by the alteration in
the British corn laws in 1846, which placed the English farmer, who
tried to preserve his land in a state of fertility, in competition
with foreign grain--growers, who, having access to boundless fields
of virgin soil, grow grain year after year until, having exhausted
the fertile element, they leave it in a barren condition, and
resort to other parts. A competition under such circumstances
resembles that of two men of equal income, one of who appears
wealthy by spending a portion of his capital, the other
parsimonious by living within his means. Of course, the latter has