And this must always be the case when one starts upon a wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it leads, cannot but check it in its progress.

For this reason, practical industry never can admit of _Sisyphism_.

The error is too quickly followed by its punishment to remain concealed.

But in the speculative industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences, only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted, and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom, that in political economy there is no principle universally true.
Let us see then, if the two opposite principles I have laid down do not predominate, each in its turn;--the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation.
I have already quoted some words of Mr.Bugeaud; but we must look on Mr.
Bugeaud in two separate characters, the agriculturist and the legislator.
As agriculturist, Mr.Bugeaud makes every effort to attain the double object of sparing labor, and obtaining bread cheap.

When he prefers a good plough to a bad one, when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz., _to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result_.