that there never
shall be plenty.

The truth of these principles our ancestors discovered by reason, and
the French have now found it by experience. In this regulation we have
the honour of being masters to those, who, in commercial policy, have
been long accounted the masters of the world. Their prejudices, their
emulation, and their vanity, have, at last, submitted to learn of us how
to ensure the bounties of nature; and it forms a strange vicissitude of
opinions, that should incline us to repeal the law which our rivals are
adopting.

It may be speciously enough proposed, that the bounty should be
discontinued sooner. Of this every man will have his own opinion; which,
as no general principles can reach it, will always seem to him more
reasonable than that of another. This is a question of which the state
is always changing with time and place, and which it is, therefore, very
difficult to state or to discuss.

It may, however, be considered, that the change of old establishments is
always an evil; and that, therefore, where the good of the change is not
certain and constant, it is better to preserve that reverence and that
confidence, which is produced by consistency of conduct and permanency
of laws:

That, since the bounty was so fixed, the price of money has been much
diminished; so that the bounty does not operate so far as when it was
first fixed, but the price at which it ceases, though nominally the
same, has, in effect and in reality, gradually diminished.

It is difficult to discover any reason why that bounty, which has
produced so much good, and has hitherto produced no harm, should be
withdrawn or abated. It is possible, that if it were reduced lower, it
would still be the motive of agriculture, and the cause of plenty; but
why we should desert experience for conjecture, and exchange a known for
a possible good, will not easily be discovered. If, by a balance of
probabilities, in which a grain of dust may turn the scale--or, by a
curious scheme of calculation, in which, if one postulate in a thousand
be erroneous, the deduction which promises plenty may end in famine;--
if, by a specious mode of uncertain ratiocination, the critical point at
which the bounty should stop, might seem to be discovered, I shall still
continue to believe that it is more safe to trust what we have already
tried; and cannot but think bread a product of too much importance to be
made the sport of subtilty, and the topick o