186 



States, if devoted to the growth of cotton to be sent to New England, or 

 even to old England for manufacture, and then sent to the tropics, would 

 produce nearly twice the quantity of sugar they now do ; and the sugar 

 would be equally the product of our own country though first assuming 

 the form of cotton; and thus we "compel ourselves to buy very dear 

 what we might have cheap enough," and "become the victims of our 

 own absurdity." 



Nor does the evil end here. As in the pages of a printed sheet, if one 

 page be out of register, all the pages must be out likewise, so, without 

 regard to political lines, when one important product is pushed be)*ond 

 its proper locality, it necessarily trenches upon the appropriate locality 

 of another, which is itself forced to seek a less congenial clime, where it 

 trenches upon the appropriate domain of some other staple, and so on, 

 until, by a single stroke of mistaken policy, every important product of 

 a whole continent is forced, more or less, out of its appropriate climate, 

 and its inhabitants are justly rewarded with the stinted or sickly fruits 

 of the rape committed upon nature. 



I will only add, that, Avhatever the political theorist may teach him', 

 the wise farmer will rather study those powers of nature with which 

 lie is a copartner, and as he finds himself in the proper locality, wiM 

 *' cast abroad the fitches and scatter the cummin, and cast in the jjrinci- 

 pal wheat and the appointed barley and the rye in their place (not out 

 of it) for his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him." 



AGRICULTURAL FENCES AND ENCLOSURES. 

 BY JOSIAH F. WILLARD, JANESVILLE. 



Originally the idea of erecting barriers in the form of fences for the 

 purpose of restraining domestic animals, was unknown. It never occurred 

 to the " Patriarchs" that long lines of fences would be a profitable subr- 

 stitute for the labors and watchings of the shepherd and herdsman ; the 

 idea never suggested itself to them, that turning their cattle and sheep 

 loose to wander at their pleasure, and take their living where they could 

 find it, would compel their grain-growing neighbors to secure themselves 

 against their ravages, by building fences around their crops. They did 

 not know that they could be the owners of innumerable flocks and herds. 



