PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURT.

PROGRESS AND PUBLIC ENCOURAGEMENT OF AGRIOCUL. TURE IN RUSSIA, PRUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES.

BY D. J. BROWNE.

ALTHOVGH it is a well established axiom in political economy that the wealth and material welfare of nations, upon which their power and financial prosperity depend, are primarily determined by tho ro- ductive forces each country possesses within itself, it is conceded that the effects of institutions— social, economic, or administrative— have done more to increase their industrial interests than all other moral and political causes combined. In common language, we often hear a country spoken of as agricultural, manufacturing, or commer- cial; but these terms imply only relative values, which serve to indi- cate the degree of importance occupied in a given territory by one or other of these three branches of productive industry, or rather the degree of development at which its industry or commerce has arrived; for at all times and in all countries, agricuſture, the“nursing mother of nations,“ forms the basis of wealth and prosperity, and the plough, in its modest guise, plays the principal part in the creation of values, even in countries the most commercial and industrial. Of this, Eng- land furnishes a most notable example: In the scale of natiens, she is decidedly the most commercial, as well as the most industrial—her trade and industry forming the basis of her power; and yet, it ap- pears from the returns of her income-tax that the net revenue of all her manufactures and commerce, and of all her personal capital, does not exceed two-thirds of the net revenue derived from her agriculture alone. From this single fact, we may infer the degree of pre-emi- nence which should be attributed to the agricultural element of national wealth.

In proceeding to the subject immediately before us, namely, the encouragement of agriculture in some of the leading countries of the globe, it may be stated that, from the rapid advancement of this science under the mere influence of an increasing population and a more diffused intelligence, aside from all intrinsic causes, such as the infinite variety of industrial products, the unprecedented progress which industry has made within the last quarter century, the tribute

1 A