Ah! if
the king could excite competition with them! Unfortunately it is
impossible. While in manufactures competition follows from
liberty and property, in agriculture liberty and property are a
direct obstacle to competition. The peasant, rewarded, not
according to his labor and intelligence, but according to the
quality of the land and the caprice of God, aims, in cultivating,
to pay the lowest possible wages and to make the least possible
advance outlays. Sure of always finding a market for his goods,
he is much more solicitous about reducing his expenses than about
improving the soil and the quality of its products. He sows, and
Providence does the rest. The only sort of competition known to
the agricultural class is that of rents; and it cannot be denied
that in France, and for instance in Beauce, it has led to useful
results. But as the principle of this competition takes effect
only at second hand, so to speak, as it does not emanate directly
from the liberty and property of the cultivators, it disappears
with the cause that produces it, so that, to insure the decline
of agricultural industry in many localities, or at least to
arrest its progress, perhaps it would suffice to make the farmers
proprietors.
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