It will be always so with every kingdom whose governors direct all their actions to the public welfare. The culture of lands, and the breeding of cattle, will be an inexhaustible fund of wealth in all countries, where, as in Egypt, these profitable callings are supported and encouraged by maxims of state and policy: and we may consider it as a misfortune, that they are at present fallen into so general a disesteem; though it is from them that the most elevated ranks (as we esteem them) are furnished, not only with the necessaries, but even the luxuries of life. “For,” says Abbé Fleury, in his admirable work, _Of the manners of the Israelites_, where the subject I am upon is thoroughly examined, “it is the peasant who feeds the citizen, the magistrate, the gentleman, the ecclesiastic: and whatever artifice and craft may be used to convert money into commodities, and these back again into money; yet all must ultimately be owned to be received from the products of the earth, and the animals which it sustains and nourishes. Nevertheless, when we compare men’s different stations of life together, we give the lowest place to the husbandman: and with many people a wealthy citizen, enervated with sloth, useless to the public, and void of all merit, has the preference, merely because he has more money, and lives a more easy and delightful life. “But let us imagine to ourselves a country where so great a difference is not made between the several conditions; where the life of a nobleman is not made to consist in idleness and doing nothing, but in a careful preservation of his liberty; that is, in a due subjection to the laws and the constitution; by a man’s subsisting upon his estate without a dependence on any one, and being contented to enjoy a little with liberty, rather than a great deal at the price of mean and base compliances: a country, where sloth, effeminacy, and the ignorance of things necessary for life, are held in just contempt; and where pleasure is less valued than health and bodily strength: in such a country, it will be much more for a man’s reputation to plough, and keep flocks, than to waste all his hours in sauntering from place to place, in gaming and expensive diversions.”