article of sale. As a further means of exciting industry, the proprietor annually distributes three prizes as rewards to those whose gardens are found to be in the highest state of cultivation. This judicious mode of rewarding industry has been beneficial also in producing a spirit of emulation amongst the rival gardeners, whose grounds being separated only by paths, the comparative state of each is easily determined.

MRS. B.

This is indeed an excellent plan; the leisure hours which the labourers might probably have passed at the alehouse are occupied in raising an additional stock of wholesome food, and the money which would have been spent in drinking is saved for a better purpose it may form perhaps the beginning of a capital, and in process of time secure a little independence for himself and his family.

CONVERSATION XI.

ON REVENUE.

MODES OF EMPLOYING CAPITAL TO PRODUCE REVE

NUE. WHICH OF THESE IS MOST ADVANTAGEOUS.

VARIES ACCORDING TO THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. GARNIER'S OBSERVATIONS ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL. EQUALITY OF PROFITS AFFORDS A CRITERION OF THE DUE DISTRIBUTION OF CAPITAL. NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF CAPITAL. EQUALITY OF PROFITS IN AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, AND TRADE. WHY THOSE PROFITS APPEAR UNEQUAL.

MRS. B.

IN our last conversation we have in some measure digressed from our subject; but I trust that you have not forgotten all we have said upon the accumulation of capital. Let us now proceed to examine more specifically the various modes in which it may be employed in order to produce a

In Agriculture,
Mines,

Fisheries,

Manufactures, and

Trade.

CAROLINE.

Of all these ways of employing capital, agriculture, no doubt, must be the most advantageous to the country, as it produces the first necessaries of life.

MRS. B.

In these northern climates it is almost as essential to our existence to be clothed and lodged as to be fed; and manufactures are, you know, requisite for these purposes.

CAROLINE.

True; but then agriculture has also the advantage of furnishing the raw materials for manufactures; it is the earth which supplies the produce with which our cloaths are made and our houses built.

MRS. B.

Yet without manufactures these materials would not be produced; it is the demand of the manufacturer for such articles which causes them to be raised by the farmer; agriculture and manufactures thus re-act on each other to their mutual advantage,

CAROLINE.

It may be so; but still it does not appear to me that they can be equally beneficial to the country. Manufactures do not, like agriculture, actually increase the produce of the earth; they create nothing new, but merely put together under another form the materials with which they are supplied by agriculture.

MRS. B.

True but by such operations they frequently increase the value of these materials an hundred fold. The powers of man in processes of art, are unquestionably inferior to those of nature, in the production of vegetation; for its operations consist not merely in a new system of chemical or mechanical combinations, but in the formation of organised bodies, endowed with the principles of life and of reproduction. You are mistaken, however, if you suppose that, in agriculture, any more than in manufactures, a single new particle of matter is created; it is merely by a new system of arrangements performed in that great laboratory of nature, the bosom of the earth, in a manner which eludes our observation, that the wonders of vegetation are developed.

CAROLINE.

But in agriculture nature facilitates the labours

bandman; and provided that he but ploughs the field and sows the seed, she performs all the remainder of the task. It is nature that unfolds the germ, and raises up the plant out of the ground; she nourishes it with genial showers, she ripens it with sun-beams, and leaves the farmer little more to do than to gather in the fruits of her labours.

How different is the case in manufactures! There man must perform the whole of the work himself; and notwithstanding the aid he derives from his mechanical or chemical inventions, it is all the result of his own toil; whether it be the labour of the head or the hands, it is all art.

MRS. B.

We are accustomed to speak of art in opposition to nature, without considering that art itself is natural to man. A state of nature in the human species, is a course of progressive improvement. Man is endowed with the faculties of invention and contrivance, which give him a considerable degree of command over the powers of nature, and render them in a great measure subservient to his use. He studies the peculiar properties of bodies in order to turn them to his advantage; he observes that light bodies float on the surface of the water, and he builds himself a boat; he feels the strength of the wind, and he raises sails; he discovers the powers of the magnet, and he directs his course by