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the inferences which would otherwise be made in regard to their value. A work in which all the circumstances which can affect the economy of different modes of cultivation, are subjected to rigorous mathematical calculation* the necessary elements being derived from exact accounts, kept by its author during fifteen years of superintendence of an agricultural school and model farm in Germanysupplies us with this illustration. Three bushels of potatoes, it is said, have been ascertained to possess the same amount of nutritive power as one bushel of rye-the standard with which all crops are compared by this writer. It is also stated that ground, equal in extent and of equal quality, will produce nine bushels of potatoes where it would yield but one of rye, while one bushel of the latter demands as much labour as 5% of the former. A given quantity of nutriment could therefore be obtained upon one-third the area of land, and with half the amount of labour, by the cultivation of potatoes, which would be required to produce it in the shape of rye. But in order to keep the soil in heart, so that it will continue to grow either rye or potatoes, a certain portion of the farm must be devoted to pasturage, that manure may be made. Taking into account the requirements in this respect of the two crops in question, it is found that the same area which suffices for the production of 39 measures of nutritive matter in rye, instead of producing three times that number in potatoes, yields but 64. The actual value of the two crops, instead of bearing the proportion of 100 to 300, has that of 100 to 164.

The above calculation proceeds upon the assumption, that the farm must manufacture and save its own manure. Every town, however, every hamlet where artizans are congregated, is a place whence the refuse of crops, after subserving human nutrition, may be removed with great advantage to the health of the inhabitants, and no detriment to the productiveness of their industry. The

* De Thünen: "RECHERCHES sur l'influences que LE PRIX DES GRAINS, LA RICHESSE DU SOL, ET LES IMPOTS exercent SUR LA CULTURE," page 178. The work is only known to the writer in the French translation, made from the original German, under the auspices of the National and Central Agricultural Society of France.

sewer-water of large towns contains its refuse in a state of dilution highly favourable to the growth of plants and the increase of fertility. "From every town of a thousand inhabitants," says Professor Johnston, “is carried annually into the sea, manure equal to 27C tons of guano, worth, at the then current price of guano in England, $13,000, and capable of raising an increased produce of not less than 1000 quarters of grain." It is alleged by competent engineers, that liquid manure can be distributed at a much less cost than that of carting an equal fertilizing value in a solid form. The drainagewater from a large portion of the city of Edinburgh has been conducted into a small brook, and made to overflow some three hundred acres of flat land, which is thus rendered so productive as to be sometimes mown seven times in a season. A portion of it, held under a long lease at £5 per acre, is sub-let at £30, and some of the richest meadows at even higher rates. Advantages of this character are the result of combination upon a large scale. The centres of population, however, supply manures which may be made immediately available by the individual farmer, with no other assistance than that of his own carts and horses. Whether it is more profitable to manufacture manure upon the farm, by devoting to that object portions of the land, which might otherwise grow crops for sale, or to procure the manure from town, depends upon the price which must be paid for it, and the distance to which it has to be carried. The German agriculturist, to whom we before referred, has deduced the relation between the prices the farmer can afford to pay for fertilizing material at the town-for the purpose of growing potatoes with the same economy as if it were made from other crops upon the farm-and the distance it is to be transported. The result at which he arrives is, that a quantity of manure which would be worth $5 40, for the purpose of applying to land in the immediate suburbs of the town, or where the expense of cartage is so trifling that it may be disregarded, is worth $4 20, if the farm be one German mile (4.60 English miles) distant-$3 10, if the distance be two German miles - $1 90, at three miles-83 cents at four; and that at the distance of 4 German, or about 22 English miles, he can pay nothing for it: though he may still carry it away as cheaply as to give up the growing of potatoes upon that portion

of his land, which must otherwise be devoted to the growth of crops for restoring the fertility which the tubercles exhaust.

It follows, from considerations which in the preceding paragraphs it has been sought to elucidate, in scant proportion to their importance, that the vicinity of the producer to the place where conversion and exchange are effected-in other words, to the consumers—is an indispensable condition of his being able to grow those crops which the earth yields most abundantly. The same space which, sown with wheat, gives what has been termed muscular matter — that is, muscle-sustaining power-to the amount of two hundred pounds, if planted with cabbages gives fifteen hundred pounds; in turnips, a thousand pounds; in beans, four hundred.* It is, however, as we have seen, but a limited circle around the centres of population, in which the agriculturist has the capacity to determine freely to what object he will consecrate his land and his labour. In proportion to his distance from the consumer, two causes act in concert to contract his power. The first is the cost of transporting the crop to market, which compels him to select those whose bulk is small compared to their value, because they require much land and much labour for their production. The second is the difficulty of bringing back, over the increasing distance, the refuse of the crop; in default of which the crop itself runs out. Whatever may be the quality of soil cultivated, these conclusions are equally valid. They hold good, without reference to the truth or falsehood of the theory of Ricardo, in regard to the occupation of the earth; while they are fatal to that of Malthus, as showing that density of population is essential to the plenitude of subsistence.

The illustrations which we have employed have generally supposed the existence of towns, from which the fertilizing elements remaining in the refuse of vegetable and animal products, after all has been extracted from them which is useful for the food and clothing of human beings, as well as what the body rejects after the process of digestion, can be gathered up to stimulate further production. There is a visible tendency in those who devote themselves to the work of conversion and exchange, to agglomerate in towns. The

* Professor Johnston, in Edinburgh Review, October, 1849.

stage of industrial progress at which any community has arrived, is denoted by the proportion subsisting between its rural and civic population. It is an unavoidable tendency; for population attracts population. Wherever a blacksmith sets up his forge and anvil, he creates a demand for the presence of the baker, the tailor, the carpenter, and every other artizan whose labour can contribute to his comfort. Their children require the presence of the schoolmaster; and with him comes the demand for the bookseller and the printer A single tailor may perhaps make the clothing for a hundred men; if so, the advent of one individual calls for only that minute fraction, the hundredth part of a tailor. He requires, however, some fraction of the labour of a hundred other craftsmen; and when the fractions are combined, as by the accession of three hundred persons to the population of a town, their value amounts to one or more units. Let a factory be erected upon the bank of any stream, and a hundred weavers or spinners be collected, it is evident at once that butchers, bakers, shoemakers, &c., must also come, and that the latter invite still further accessions, by furnishing a market for the labour of others. If there are only enough carpenters to supply the wants of the operatives in the factory, in making machinery, buildings, &c., another is necessary, to saw and plane for the blacksmith and his fellow-mechanics, for the grocer, the doctor, and the clergyman. With every one that comes, the necessity of sending to a distant town for some product or service, diminishes, the advantages of combination increase, and the town becomes more attractive. People gravitate towards it in proportion to its mass-to the number who have already been collected.

The argument, however, derives none of its force from the supposition that the consumers are assembled in large numbers in villages or cities, and loses none if that supposition is negatived. On the contrary, the more equally the inhabitants are diffused throughout their territory, the less is the aggregate of transportation which substracts from their productive power. The natural course of things is towards the growth of a multitude of little centres of exchange, for the reasons thus indicated by Adam Smith. After remarking that, "According to the natural course of things, the greater part of the capital of every growing society is first directed to agricul

ture, afterwards to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign trade," he declares "that order of things is in every country promoted by the natural inclinations of man ;" and, giving the reasons why man retains, in every stage of his existence, a predilection for the primitive employment of the race, he continues:

Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors, are people whose service the farmer has frequent occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand occasionally in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who contribute still further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work and the means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. Had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country."

The great cities, which grow up to proportions outrunning the cultivation of the country, where population is unnaturally congested, and which Jefferson called "eye-sores on the body politic," these are everywhere seen to be the result of foreign commerce. So far as they constitute an exception or impediment to the natural tendency of things, towards the distribution of exchanges among numerous local centres, it is the consequence, not of physical laws, but of subjection to institutions which tolerate the effort to thwart men's natural inclination, to conform to those laws and make their exchanges at home rather than abroad.

It has now, we conceive, been rigidly demonstrated, that inland or domestic trade maintains at least double the number of producers that could be sustained within the country by the opposite system, and that it necessarily tends to increase the efficiency of all those

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