tock, the interest of the money he turns, together
with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does make twelve or
fifteen per centum by the year on his capital. I speak of the
prosperous. In most of the parts of England which have fallen within my
observation I have rarely known a farmer, who to his own trade has not
added some other employment or traffic, that, after a course of the most
unremitting parsimony and labor, (such for the greater part is theirs,)
and persevering in his business for a long course of years, died worth
more than paid his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in nearly
the same equal conflict between industry and want, in which the last
predecessor, and a long line of predecessors before him, lived and died.

Observe that I speak of the generality of farmers, who have not more
than from one hundred and fifty to three or four hundred acres. There
are few in this part of the country within the former or much beyond the
latter extent. Unquestionably in other places there are much larger.
But I am convinced, whatever part of England be the theatre of his
operations, a farmer who cultivates twelve hundred acres, which I
consider as a large farm, though I know there are larger, cannot proceed
with any degree of safety and effect with a smaller capital than ten
thousand pounds, and that he cannot, in the ordinary course of culture,
make more upon that great capital of ten thousand pounds than twelve
hundred a year.

As to the weaker capitals, an easy judgment may be formed by what very
small errors they may be farther attenuated, enervated, rendered
unproductive, and perhaps totally destroyed.

This constant precariousness and ultimate moderate limits of a farmer's
fortune, on the strongest capital, I press, not only on account of the
hazardous speculations of the times, but because the excellent and most
useful works of my friend, Mr. Arthur Young, tend to propagate that
error (such I am very certain it is) of the largeness of a farmer's
profits. It is not that his account of the produce does often greatly
exceed, but he by no means makes the proper allowance for accidents and
losses. I might enter into a convincing detail, if other more
troublesome and more necessary details were not before me.

This proposed discretionary tax on labor militates with the
recommendations of the Board of Agriculture: they recommend a general
use of the drill culture. I agree with the Board, that, where th