Science Quote by Joseph Hume

A neat little grenade disguised as bookkeeping. Hume’s line rejects the sentimental halo that governments have long draped over farming: the idea that agriculture is uniquely virtuous, uniquely fragile, uniquely entitled to public shelter. By calling it “capital employed” rather than “the land” or “the farmer,” he drains the romance out of rural life and recasts it as what it is in a modernizing economy: investment, risk, and returns. That phrasing is the tell. He’s not arguing about tradition; he’s arguing about incentives.

The specific intent is policy-hardheaded: stop treating agriculture as a special case in tariff schedules, subsidies, and protective laws. In early-19th-century Britain, that aim would have landed squarely amid the battles over protectionism and the political power of landowners. Protection for agriculture wasn’t just an economic choice; it was a class arrangement, a way to keep rents high and competitors out while presenting the whole thing as patriotic necessity.

The subtext is a demand for symmetry and honesty. If the state is going to pick winners, it should admit it’s doing so on behalf of a constituency, not a national moral cause. Hume’s utilitarian edge is also implicit: capital should flow to where it’s most productive, not where lawmakers feel nostalgia or owe favors. It’s a proto-free-market argument, but also a proto-anti-capture argument: the loudest “special pleading” sectors shouldn’t get to write the rules.

Calling Hume a scientist fits, oddly well. It’s the tone of someone trying to swap inherited hierarchy for a colder metric: equal treatment, measurable outcomes, fewer sacred cows.