CHAP. IX.
OF THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, OR OF THOSE
SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WHICH REPRESENT
THE PRODUCE OF LAND, AS EITHER
THE SOLE OR THE PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF THE
REVENUE AND WEALTH OF EVERY COUNTRY.
The agricultural systems of political economy
will not require so long an explanation as that
which I have thought it necessary to bestow
upon the mercantile or commercial system.
That system which represents the produce
of land as the sole source of the revenue and
wealth of every country, has, so far as I know,
never been adopted by any nation, and it at
present exists only in the speculations of a
few men of great learning and ingenuity in
France. It would not, surely, be worth
while to examine at great length the errors of
a system which never has done, and probably
never will do, any harm in any part of the
world. I shall endeavour to explain, however,
as distinctly as I can, the great outlines
of this very ingenious system.
Mr. Colbert, the famous minister of Lewis
XIV. was a man of probity, of great industry,
and knowledge of detail; of great experience
and acuteness in the examination of
public accounts; and of abilities, in short,
every way fitted for introducing method and
good order into the collection and expenditure
of the public revenue. That minister
had unfortunately embraced all the prejudices
of the mercantile system, in its nature and
essence a system of restraint and regulation,
and such as could scarce fail to be agreeable
to a laborious and plodding man of business,
who had been accustomed to regulate the different
departments of public offices, and to
establish the necessary checks and controuls
for confining each to its proper sphere. The
industry and commerce of a great country,
he endeavoured to regulate upon the same
model as the departments of a public office;
and instead of allowing every man to pursue
his own interest his own way, upon the liberal
plan of equality, liberty, and justice, he
bestowed upon certain branches of industry
extraordinary privileges, while he laid others
under as extraordinary restraints. He was
not only disposed, like other European ministers,
to encourage more the industry of the
towns than that of the country; but, in order
to support the industry of the towns, he
was willing even to depress and keep down
that of the country. In order to render provisions
cheap to the inhabitants of the towns,
and thereby to encourage manufactures and
foreign commerce, he prohibited altogether
the exportation of corn, and thus excluded
the inhabitants of the country from every foreign
market, for by far the most important
part of the produce of their industry. This
prohibition, joined to the restraints imposed
by the ancient provincial laws of France upon
the transportation of corn from one province
to another, and to the arbitrary and degrading
taxes which are levied upon the cultivators
in almost all the provinces, discouraged
and kept down the agriculture of that country
very much below the state to which it would
naturally have risen in so very fertile a soil,
and so very happy a climate. This state of
discouragement and depression was felt more
or less in every different part of the country,
and many different inquiries were set on foot
concerning the causes of it. One of those
causes appeared to be the preference given, by
the institutions of Mr. Colbert, to the industry
of the towns above that of the country.
If the rod be bent too much one way, says
the proverb, in order to make it straight, you
must bend it as much the other. The French
philosophers, who have proposed the system
which represents agriculture as the sole source
of the revenue and wealth of every country,
seem to have adopted this proverbial maxim;
and, as in the plan of Mr. Colbert, the industry
of the towns was certainly overvalued
in comparison with that of the country, so in
their system it seems to be as certainly under-valued.
The different orders of people, who have
ever been supposed to contribute in any respect
towards the annual produce of the land
and labour of the country, they divide into
three classes. The first is the class of the
proprietors of land. The second is the class
of the cultivators, of farmers and country labourers,
whom they honour with the peculiar
appellation of the productive class. The
third is the class of artificers, manufacturers,
and merchants, whom they endeavour to degrade
by the humiliating appellation of the
barren or unproductive class.
The class of proprietors contributes to the
annual produce, by the expense which they
may occasionally lay out upon the improvement
of the land, upon the buildings, drains,
inclosures, and other ameliorations, which
they may either make or maintain upon it,
and by means of which the cultivators are enabled,
with the same capital, to raise a greater
produce, and consequently to pay a greater
rent. This advanced rent may be considered
as the interest or profit due to the proprietor,
upon the expense or capital which he thus
employs in the improvement of his land.
Such expenses are in this system called ground
expenses (depenses foncieres).
The cultivators or farmers contribute to the
annual produce, by what are in this system
called the original and annual expenses (depenses
primitives, et depenses annuelles), which
they lay out upon the cultivation of the land.
The original expenses consist in the instruments
of husbandry, in the stock of cattle, in