Agriculture for improvement can be carried on by none but those who have wealth and superfluity, and is prosecuted with a view to future, not to present advantage: of this we shall treat in another place. For I consider it as a quite different operation, influenced by different principles, and no ways to be confounded with the present subject of inquiry. But I have insensibly been wandering through an extensive subject, and it is now time to return. I have said above that a river might as easily ascend to its source, as an industrious people voluntarily adopt a more operose system of agriculture than that already established, while the spirit of industry prevails on one hand, and while farmers have profit only in view on the other. In consequence of this position, I have treated the plan proposed for augmenting the inhabitants of the island, by the introduction of a more operose agriculture as absurd, and so it certainly is: but let me throw in a circumstance which affects the spirit of that people, and the plan becomes plausible and easy. Let a part of the wealthy proprietors of the lands take a taste for agriculture. Let a Tull, a Du Hamel turn agriculture into an object of luxury, of amusement. Let this science be turned into a Missisippi, or South Sea scheme. Let the rich be made to believe that treasures are to be found at a small expence, laid at first out upon farming, and you will soon see the most operose species of the science go forward, and the produce of it come to market and be sold, in spite of all competition. My Lady Duchess’s knotting may be sold at so much a pound, as well as that performed by a girl who does not spend six pence a day; but if the one and the other be considered relatively to the expence of the manufacturer, every knot of my Lady’s will be found to have cost as much as a pound of the other. The Duchess’s pound, however, increases the quantity of knots; and so does my Lord’s farm the mass of subsistence for the whole society. The nation also gains by his extravagance having taken a turn, which may produce the permanent good effect of improving a part of the country, though at an expence infinitely beyond the value of it. I must now again touch upon another part of my subject, which I think has been treated too superficially. In a former chapter I have shewn how industry has the natural effect of collecting into towns and cities the free hands of a state, leaving the farmers in their farms and villages. This distribution served the purpose of explaining certain principles; but when examined relatively to other circumstances which at that time I had not in my eye, it will be found by far too general. Let me therefore add some farther observations upon that matter.