T RAV

18 . TRAVELS IN EUROPE.statesman may exclaim, like Pharaoh of old, " Ye are idle ! yeare idle!"but the radicalfault is, where it neverwill be acknowledged, in him.Œconomics, Statistics, aIl bow unde'r the pressure of political evi!.Agriculture is the basis of nationalaggrandizement; :any other, naval,manufacturing, or mercantile, is fallacious. It was lntended that merlshould live by each other; not by plunder, but in association: by theearnings deduced from supplying reciprocal wants, the balance of demands,to the common benefit of the whole. Associal·lifeadcvanoosthese wants multiply, pari paSSit, through aIl their gradations acquired,fanciful, and capricious, but aU calling as loudly for gratification as themost early wants of nature, disbl1rsing, and thus,inadvertently, compensatingand inviting industry. How erroneously then do thosereasonor calculate, who would infer that the world can be over-peopled!With the immutahle decree that man should labour, cornes the benevolentdispensation that heneed not ,vante Ifdebarred from the former,or subject to the latter, it is a proof that a/ fault exists somewhere,andwhere i3 it so likely to be lodged as in the heacls of mankincl*?A check to the operaHve powers of man is obvious throughoutthisgreat country. Statistics and Œconomics are notwithstanding favouritesubjects of reflection here,as is wellknown to aU conversant withFrench literatlire ; and copious extracts from their Encyclopœdias and}\1aisons Rustiques might be appropriately transcribed, the insertionwhereof wouId make a most respectable book. This ambition, however,powerful as it may be deemed, shaH flot stirnulate the invasion orplunder of these massive compilations.lit In faet, ifthe hearts of mankind were as bad as their. heads, the.. w;hole race would have beenextinet long ago. But time is merely wasted where one reasons to bring men's actions to a law ofconsistency, with whieh law they are ever at variance.