tions for improving
their arts, or extending their traffick. But there is no necessity to
infer, that we should cease from commerce, before the revolution of
things shall transfer it to some other regions! Such vicissitudes the
world has often seen; and, therefore, such we have reason to expect. We
hear many clamours of declining trade, which are not, in my opinion,
always true; and many imputations of that decline to governours and
ministers, which may be sometimes just, and sometimes calumnious. But it
is foolish to imagine, that any care or policy can keep commerce at a
stand, which almost every nation has enjoyed and lost, and which we must
expect to lose as we have long enjoyed.

There is some danger, lest our neglect of agriculture should hasten its
departure. Our industry has, for many ages, been employed in destroying
the woods which our ancestors have planted. It is well known that
commerce is carried on by ships, and that ships are built out of trees;
and, therefore, when I travel over naked plains, to which tradition has
preserved the name of forests, or see hills arising on either hand
barren and useless, I cannot forbear to wonder, how that commerce, of
which we promise ourselves the perpetuity, shall be continued by our
descendants; nor can restrain a sigh, when I think on the time, a time
at no great distance, when our neighbours may deprive us of our naval
influence, by refusing us their timber.

By agriculture only can commerce be perpetuated; and by agriculture
alone can we live in plenty without intercourse with other nations.
This, therefore, is the great art, which every government ought to
protect, every proprietor of lands to practise, and every inquirer into
nature to improve.

CONSIDERATION ON THE CORN LAWS[1].

By what causes the necessaries of life have risen to a price, at which a
great part of the people are unable to procure them, how the present
scarcity may be remedied, and calamities of the same kind may, for the
future, be prevented, is an inquiry of the first importance; an inquiry,
before which all the considerations which commonly busy the legislature
vanish from the view.

The interruption of trade, though it may distress part of the community,
leaves the rest power to communicate relief: the decay of one
manufacture may be compensated by the advancement of another: a defeat
may be repaired by victory: a rupture with one nation may be balanced by
an alliance with another