to the Germans; nor
can we expect any improvements in agriculture from a people, whose
prosperity every year experienced a general change by a new division of
the arable lands, and who, in that strange operation, avoided disputes,
by suffering a great part of their territory to lie waste and without
tillage.

Gold, silver, and iron, were extremely scarce in Germany. Its barbarous
inhabitants wanted both skill and patience to investigate those rich
veins of silver, which have so liberally rewarded the attention of the
princes of Brunswick and Saxony. Sweden, which now supplies Europe with
iron, was equally ignorant of its own riches; and the appearance of the
arms of the Germans furnished a sufficient proof how little iron they
were able to bestow on what they must have deemed the noblest use of
that metal. The various transactions of peace and war had introduced
some Roman coins (chiefly silver) among the borderers of the Rhine and
Danube; but the more distant tribes were absolutely unacquainted with
the use of money, carried on their confined traffic by the exchange of
commodities, and prized their rude earthen vessels as of equal value
with the silver vases, the presents of Rome to their princes and
ambassadors. To a mind capable of reflection, such leading facts convey
more instruction, than a tedious detail of subordinate circumstances.
The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our
wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas;
and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the
powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the
objects they were designed to represent. The use of gold and silver is
in a great measure factitious; but it would be impossible to enumerate
the important and various services which agriculture, and all the arts,
have received from iron, when tempered and fashioned by the operation
of fire, and the dexterous hand of man. Money, in a word, is the most
universal incitement, iron the most powerful instrument, of human
industry; and it is very difficult to conceive by what means a people,
neither actuated by the one, nor seconded by the other, could emerge
from the grossest barbarism.

If we contemplate a savage nation in any part of the globe, a supine
indolence and a carelessness of futurity will be found to constitute
their general character. In a civilized state, every faculty of man
is expanded and exercise