114 Prices and Profits of Agricultural Products. [March, 



dollars for the civil list and the public defense, in time of peace ; while 

 agriculture, the paramount interest of the country, and bearing four- 

 fifths of the whole burden of taxation, received not one dollar! Is it 



^ise is it just, thus to neglect that interest which sustains all others? 



The vast extent, the wonderful fertility of our country, with its 

 unparalleled amplitude of adaptations as to soil and surface, will serve 

 to constitute and continue agriculture as the great interest of the United 

 States, until all our vacant lands are brought into cultivation, to feed 

 and enrich the teeming millions that are here to have their homes. 

 Indeed, earth has no other country, unbroken by political boundaries, 

 whose productions are gathered from so wide a range of latitude, and 

 yielded from so many varieties of climate. Here are farms producing 

 wool, and farms yielding cotton — farms for growing wheat, and farms 

 for growing rice — farms for raising cattle and corn, and farms for rais- 

 in o- sugar and the spices. Never before has earth presented a field of 

 production so vast, so varied, and so fertile, to the control of one people. 

 And it can not be that the genius of our people will permit the agricul- 

 ture of the country to continue to be burdened with the support and 

 nourishment of a government too haughty to acknowledge, and too illib- 

 eral to foster these unpretending, yet powerful elements of its own great- 

 ness, security, and wealth. In truth, the farmer, the manufacturer, and 

 the merchant, are allies, bound together by ties indissoluble, and, as such, 

 should be treated by government without partiality. But, we begin to 

 perceive, that while commerce and the arts have been the pet favorites 

 of legislation, the recipients of governmental liberality, and, therefore, 

 replete with public honor, agriculture has been compelled, like the hum- 

 ble publican, to stand " afar ofi"," and under this public neglect has sunk 

 into disrepute, or remained in comparative obscurity. 



Nor can it be presumed that this evil course of public procedure can 

 be pursued, without producing its legitimate consequences of public evil. 

 And one of the evils, of no small import, resulting from this course is, 

 the withdrawal of great numbers of our most worthy and promising 

 youth from the country, and from the healthful and profitable pursuits 

 of agriculture, into the giddy vortex of city life, and into the bewildering 

 maze of mercantile employments. That department of business has 

 consequently become crowded with numliers, and is overwhelmed with 

 competition ; whereby thousands of its followers, after a few years spent 

 in convulsively grasping to secure their dazzling day-dreams, have hope- 

 lessly failed, and eventually become the most helpless and pitiable of all 

 public paupers — j^^^^ ^'^^^ proud. That this is so, the observation of 

 all considerate minds will abundantly attest. And we may well venture 



