386
o o
XIX.
history of settlements and trade
k the bent of their talents, which makes this attachment
grow up into a kind of paffion ; and likewife by the
confideration they refled on thofe who diftinguilh
themfelves in the purfuit of them. It is not poffible
to admire the works of genius, without efteeming and
careffing the perfons endowed with that valuable gift
of nature. But the man devoted to the labours of
hufbandry, if he cannot enjoy in quiet what he pof-
feffes, and what he gathers ; if he be incapable of im-
proving the benefits of his condition, becaufe the
tweets of it are taken from him ; if the military fer-
vice, if vaffalage and taxes are to deprive him of his
child, his cattle, and his corn, nothing remains for him
but to imprecate both the fky and the land that tor-
ment him, and to abandon his fields and his country.
A wife government cannot, therefore, refofe to pay
its principal attention to agriculture, without endan-
gering its very exiftence : the moft ready and effectual
means of affitting it, is to favour the multiplication of
every kind of produdion, by the moft free and gene-
ral circulation.
An unreftrained liberty in the exchange of commo-
dities renders a people at the fame time commercial
and attentive to agriculture ; it extends the views of
the farmer towards trade, and thofe of the merchant
towards cultivation. It conneds them to each other
by fuch relations as are regular and confiant. All
men belong equally to the villages and to the cities,
and there is a reciprocal communication maintained
between the provinces. The circulation of commo-
dities brings on in reality the golden age, in which
ftreams of milk and honey are faid to have flowed
through the plains. All the lands are cultivated; the
meadows are favourable to tillage by the cattle they
feed ; the growth of corn promotes that of vines, by
furniflrina; a confiant and certain fubfiftence to him
who neither fows nor
and
reaps, but plants, prunes
gathers.
Let us now confider the effeds of a contrary fyftem,
and attempt to regulate agriculture, and the circula-