in the
hands of a neighboring banker, who on his part did not leave these
idle in his strong-box, but lent them to various tradesmen, so that
the whole came to be usefully employed in the payment of wages.

The countryman died, and his son, become master of the inheritance,
said to himself: "It must be confessed that my father has, all his
life, allowed himself to be duped. He bought iron, and thus paid
_tribute_ to England, while our own land could, by an effort, be made
to produce iron as well as England. He bought coal, cloths, and
oranges, thus paying _tribute_ to New Brunswick, France, and Sicily,
very unnecessarily; for coal may be found, doeskins may be made, and
oranges may be forced to grow, within our own territory. He paid
tribute to the foreign miner and the weaver; our own servants could
very well mine our iron and get up native doeskins almost as good as
the French article. He did all he could to ruin himself, and gave to
strangers what ought to have been kept for the benefit of his own
household."

Full of this reasoning, our headstrong fellow determined to change the
routine of his crops. He divided his farm into twenty parts. On one he
dug for coal; on another he erected a cloth factory; on a third he put
a hot-house and cultivated the orange; he devoted the fourth to vines,
the fifth to wheat, &c., &c. Thus he succeeded in rendering himself
_independent_, and furnished all his family supplies from his own
farm. He no longer received anything from the general circulation;
neither, it is true, did he cast anything into it. Was he the richer
for this course? No; for his mine did not yield coal as cheaply as he
could buy it in the market, nor was the climate favorable to the
orange. In short, the family supply of these articles was very
inferior to what it had been during the time when the father had
obtained them and others by exchange of produce.

With regard to the demand for labor, it certainly was no greater than
formerly. THERE WERE, TO BE SURE, FIVE TIMES AS MANY FIELDS TO
CULTIVATE, BUT THEY WERE FIVE TIMES SMALLER. If coal was mined, there
was also less wheat; and because there were no more oranges bought,
neither was there any more rye sold. Besides, the farmer could not
spend in wages more than his capital, and his capital, instead of
increasing, was now constantly diminishing. A great part of it was
necessarily devoted to numerous buildings and utensils, indispensable
to a person who deter