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tliis excess, as they produce nothing of value in exchange amongother nations, for which they might receive the surplus produceof foreign agriculture in return.
A sort of country trading capital will also have some little in-fluence upon the size of farms. As labour comes to be more andmore subdivided, in pursuance of the common sense of indivi-dual interest, the farmer will more and more exclusively confinehimself to his proper business of a producer; merchants will trans-act betwixt him and the consumer; professional carters and car-riers will also spring up; and these will, to a certain extent, raisesuch an effectual demand for minute farms, for conveniency ofkeep of draught horses, as no occupation for the general purposesof agricnlture can compete with.
Had public legislation never interfered in cramping the free useof perpetual landed property, by the wretched policy of entail,—and had private legislation not withdrawn (through pride or ava-rice) all right of property from the occupation of lease, in de-barring assignation and subset,—the most profitable occupancywould ever take place, upon the strong-telling principle of its be-ing able to afford most.
No agrarian project, devised by those idlers who devote them-selves to speculate for the public good, but which nobody is in-terested to effect, can ever possibly be realized. This observa-tion may probably be found applicable to all those schemes ofland-occupancy which have been humanely devised for the High-lands of Scotland , in order to retain that extent of populationwhich can only suit a situation of landed property such as thatdescribed in entering upon this article of the holding of land uponlease.
The legal protection of vermin, may well be considered as in-jurious to the agricultural industry of lease-holders.
As in the vegetable world, we account those plants which takenourishment from the soil, but which cannot be converted intohuman use, to be noxious weeds, in contradistinction to the crops;so in the animal world, we account those animals which consumethe vegetable or animal produce of agriculture, but which ateeither unfit for human use, or cannot be brought under the com*mand of man, to be destructive vermin, in contradistinction tofarm live-stock.
All game animals come under this description, as also pigeons,which, though in a state of semi-domestication, are neverthelessof a semi-feree natures : Against their licensed depredations, theagriculturist, holding lands upon lease, enjoys no power of p re *vention, and he has little recourse for compensation. The gomelaws, obtained in favour of the monopoly of those vested with theexclusive privilege of appropriating them when they can catchthem, are of similar complexion with those mentioned in a preced-ing long-note, Sect. II. p. 208 Spseq. as obtained by the maul-