ABSTRACT
Here, as I have said, is to be found a robust race, with a strongly marked nationality, contending with the rigour of the climate and the poverty of the soil, and therefore from the earliest times devoted to industrial employments ; recently they have been dragged into the vortex of the modern manufacturing system. It is
calculated that the soil yields only three times the quantity of seed sown. Its natural infertility might be much improved by manure, and a greater application of industry ; but the efforts of a few landowners in this respect have been little imitated, and by the peasants not at all. The reason is obvious: trade and commerce of all kinds pay well, while agriculture yields no profit on the capital and labour spent upon it.
