But who shall calculate all the thoughts and the labours of such men as Fitzherbert, Tusser, Gooch, Platt, Hartlib, Weston, Markham, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Norden, John Evelyn, Worlidge, Stillingfleet, Harte, Arthur Young, Maxwell, Lord Kaimes, Sir John Sinclair, etc. etc.? Who shall aggregate and estimate the numerous and valuable suggestions and articles of anonymous writers in the journals; and the personal labours and fostering influence of such men as the late Dukes of Buccleugh, and of Bedford, the Duke of Portland, Earl Spencer, the late Lord Somerville, Mr. Coke of Holkham, now the Earl of Leicester, and many other noblemen and gentlemen who have spent their lives in the unostentatious but most meritorious endeavour to perfect the agricultural science of England? With the exception of naturalists, there are no men whose pursuits seem to me to yield them so much real happiness as intelligent agriculturists whose hearts are in the business; and though there are men whose offices or professions place them more in the public eye, there are none who are more truly the benefactors of their country. Such were Lord Somerville and the Duke of Buccleugh, as described by Sir Walter Scott; and there is a passage in his memoir of the latter nobleman well worth the notice of those who propagate or believe in the nonsense of the economists on the non-influence of absenteeism. “In the year 1817, when the poor stood so much in need of employment, a friend asked the Duke why his Grace did not prepare to go to London in the spring? By way of answer, the Duke shewed him a list of day-labourers then employed in improvements on his different estates, the number of whom, exclusive of his regular establishments, amounted to _nine hundred and forty-seven persons_. If we allow to each labourer two persons, whose support depended on his wages, the Duke was in a manner foregoing, during this severe year, the privilege of his rank, in order to provide with more convenience for a little army of nearly three thousand persons, many of whom must otherwise have found it difficult to obtain subsistence. The result of such conduct is twice blessed; both in the means which it employs, and in the end which it attains in the general improvement of the country. This anecdote forms a good answer to those theorists who pretend that the residence of proprietors on their estates is a matter of indifference to the inhabitants of that district. Had the Duke been residing, and spending his revenue elsewhere, one half of these poor people would have wanted employment and food; and would probably have been little comforted by any metaphysical arguments upon population, which could have been presented to their investigation.”--_Scott’s Prose Works_, vol. 4.