_reverence_ which we pay to the dogmas of
other ignorant and presumptuous men.

If any one were to tell them that they were to give in an account of all
the stock in their shops,--that attempts would be made to limit their
profits, or raise the price of the laboring manufacturers upon them, or
recommend to government, out of a capital from the public revenues, to
set up a shop of the same commodities, in order to rival them, and keep,
them to reasonable dealing,--they would very soon see the impudence,
injustice, and oppression of such a course. They would not be mistaken:
but they are of opinion that agriculture is to be subject to other laws,
and to be governed by other principles.

A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen into than that the
trades of agriculture and grazing can be conducted upon any other than
the common principles of commerce: namely, that the producer should be
permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible profit which
without fraud or violence he can make; to turn plenty or scarcity to the
best advantage he can; to keep back or to bring forward his commodities
at his pleasure; to account to no one for his stock or for his gain. On
any other terms he is the slave of the consumer: and that he should be
so is of no benefit to the consumer. No slave was ever so beneficial to
the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by
convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests
and compromised advantages. The consumer, if he were suffered, would in
the end always be the dupe of his own tyranny and injustice. The landed
gentleman is never to forget that the farmer is his representative.

It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the farmer. The farmer's
capital (except in a few persons and in a very few places) is far more
feeble than commonly is imagined. The trade is a very poor trade; it is
subject to great risks and losses. The capital, such as it is, is turned
but once in the year; in some branches it requires three years before
the money is paid: I believe never less than three in the turnip and
grass-land course, which is the prevalent course on the more or less
fertile sandy and gravelly loams,--and these compose the soil in the
south and southeast of England, the best adapted, and perhaps the only
ones that are adapted, to the turnip husbandry.

It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, counting the value of
his quick and dead s