The culture of potatoes falling to the lot of the loweft clafs of the people, they never form a fecond idea how their culture may be improved; this may easily be fuppofed from the ignorance in which they have been bred; they are converfant only in fenfible objects, fuch as ftrike the external eye; the intellectual eye continues in darknefs, nor can it be opened but with great difficulty; they continue to pursue the beaten track, without diverging from it, and because they see that fuch a process on potatoes produces fuch a crop, they content themselves with it, and if they fhould be fo fortunate as to have a fufficiency of manure for their gardens, they fleep, in eafe, and think that the only improvement potatoes are capable of receiving. Nor do even gentlemen, or the better fort of farmers, take this culture into confidera tion, they content themfelves with laying out their fruit and pleasure gardens to advantage, and provided they can furnifh their tables with variety of fruit and vegetables, they never confider the tables of the poor cottiers, but leave to them the drudgery of potatoe tillage, for their fuftenance and fupport.

If gentlemen would next spring preferve those shoots, that would have been thrown away as ufelefs, (for even the pigs do not eat them) and begin the culture in the manner I have laid down, and call upon their lower tenantry, who live moftly on potatoes, to fee the experiment made, and its process, and call upon them again when the potatoes are ripe, to witnefs the produce: felf-interest will make them adopt it; they know very well the expence of buying feed potatoes, and the extravagant price they are often bought at; they know very well, that if any fuccedaneum can be adduced to fupply the want of feed potatoes, it will be a faving of fo much; that the money heretofore laid out in buying feed potatoes, will help to pay the landlord's rent: Thefe confiderations (when fatisfied of the fuccefs of the experiment) will by degrees lead them into it; and in a few years this culture will become general. But I would not recommend in the first inftance, that gentlem fhould try the experiment in potatoe ground; a fair trial cannot be made where any of the feed potatoes may remain, for notwithstanding the greatest care in digging them out, many will remain in ground,

and

and of course mix with the fhoots, fo that the experiment cannot be ascertained with any degree of precifion.

Before the experiment had received its final proof in presence of Ben. Frend, Efq; our Chief Magiftrate, and fome other gentlemen, feveral farmers on hearing that I had made the experiment on the shoots, were induced by curiofity to go into my garden to fee them; on seeing the ftalks fo amazingly thick, they expreffed their aftonishment, and faid, that if the potatoes anfwered to the appearance, that there never was a more useful or profitable difcovery made in this or any other kingdom for encreafing the general ftock of provifions for the poor; but such was their narrow policy, that they condemned the principle in general, and faid, that " if every "tiller of potatoes would adopt the experi

ment, there would be every year fuch a "redundancy, that potatoes would bear no "price; that the countryman would not "know how to dispose of them, or be able "to pay the rent of the ground, and that "they would anfwer very well for a private "gentleman,

"gentleman, who wanted to raise early po"tatoes." These objections were fo futile and infignificant, that they carried with them a conviction of the utility of the experiment, and proved to a demonstration the advantages refulting to the poor, from the practice of it.

The great object of the Legislature in this kingdom, has been the encrease of agriculture: Lord Viscount Pery first began it several years ago, by introducing an Act into the House of Commons for the encouragement of it in the interior parts of the kingdom, and a bounty was given by the Act to the landcarriage of grain and flour to the city of Dublin; this has had the best and happiest effects, as it enabled the remote tiller to bring his grain and flour to market at as cheap a rate, as the farmer near the metropolis; and the Right Hon. John Foster the present Speaker, has completed the business in the most effectual manner, by introducing an Act giving a bounty on the exportation of grain, &c. This has greatly enriched the farmers on the fea coafts and navigable rivers, and enables them to improve thofe barren tracts of mountain,

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which for want of the hand of the diligent to cultivate and improve, would have continued in their original barrennefs: These we fee daily improving; the country begins now to wear a more pleafing face; the mountains are shaking off their dark and dingey hue; " and the corn on the hills feem to rejoice "and fing." These the effects of the two Acts of Parliament, and these will hand down the names of the two Right Honourable pro moters of them to pofterity with the greatest honour, as through them, this kingdom is daily encreasing in industry and opulence.

But to return to the objection made by those narrow-minded farmers: Do they not know that potatoe tillage is in general the first preparation for corn tillage? Can they be strangers to the poor man's stock, pigs? and that these in the general are what he has to depend upon for his rent? And that while Great Britain has a fleet to victual, or islands to fend provifions to, that pork and bacon will always bear a price? If then the poor tillers should have a redundancy of potatoes, let them encrease their stock, and they will find themselves daily encreafing in opulence,

and