olatilized; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous activity, and thereby
throws into the hands of the several managers, principal and
subordinate, Parisian and provincial, all the representative of money,
and perhaps a full tenth part of all the land in France, which has now
acquired the worst and most pernicious part of the evil of a paper
circulation, the greatest possible uncertainty in its value. They have
reversed the Latonian kindness to the landed property of Delos. They
have sent theirs to be blown about, like the light fragments of a wreck,
_oras et littora circum_.

The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers, and without any fixed
habits or local predilections, will purchase to job out again, as the
market of paper or of money or of land shall present an advantage. For
though a holy bishop thinks that agriculture will derive great
advantages from the "_enlightened_" usurers who are to purchase the
Church confiscations, I, who am not a good, but an old farmer, with
great humility beg leave to tell his late Lordship that usury is not a
tutor of agriculture; and if the word "enlightened" be understood
according to the new dictionary, as it always is in your new schools, I
cannot conceive how a man's not believing in God can teach him to
cultivate the earth with the least of any additional skill or
encouragement. "_Diis immortalibus sero_," said an old Roman, when he
held one handle of the plough, whilst Death held the other. Though you
were to join in the commission all the directors of the two Academies to
the directors of the _Caisse d'Escompte_, an old experienced peasant is
worth them all. I have got more information upon a curious and
interesting branch of husbandry, in one short conversation with an old
Carthusian monk, than I have derived from all the bank directors that I
have ever conversed with. However, there is no cause for apprehension
from the meddling of money-dealers with rural economy. These gentlemen
are too wise in their generation. At first, perhaps, their tender and
susceptible imaginations may be captivated with the innocent and
unprofitable delights of a pastoral life; but in a little time they will
find that agriculture is a trade much more laborious and much less
lucrative than that which they had left. After making its panegyric,
they will turn their backs on it, like their great precursor and
prototype. They may, like him, begin by singing, "_Beatus ille_"--but
what will be the en