NATIONAL IGNORANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST. 



or no care to preserve or maintain it, rather than a wise and prudent one, seeking to 

 maintain that estate in its best and most productive condition. 



To be sure, our trade and commerce are pursued with a thrift and sagacity likely 

 to add largely to our substantial wealth, and to develop the collateral resources of the 

 country. But, after all, trade and commerce are not the great interests of the coun- 

 try. That intei-est is, as every one admits, agriculture. By the latter, the great bulk 

 of the people live, and by it all are fed. It is clear, therefore, if that interest is ne- 

 glected or misunderstood, the population of the country may steadily increase, but the 

 means of svipportiug that population, (which can never be largely a manufacturing po- 

 pulation,) must necessarily lessen, proportionately, every year. 



Now, there are two undeniable facts at present staring us Americans in the face — 

 amid all this prosperity : the first is, that the productive power of nearly all the land 

 in the United States which has been ten years in cultivation, is fearfully lessening every 

 season, from the desolating effects of a ruinous system of husbandry ; and the second, 

 is, that in consequence of this, the rural population of the older states is either at a 

 stand still, or it is falling off, or it increases very slowly in proportion to the popula- 

 tion of those cities and towns largely engaged in commercial pursuits. 



Our census returns show, for instance, that in some of the states, (such as Ehode 

 Island, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland,) the only increase of population is in 

 the tow7is — for in the rural population there is no growth at all. In the great agricul- 

 tural state of New- York, the gain in the fourteen largest towns is sixty-four per cent, 

 while in the rest of the state it is but nineteen per cent. In Pennsylvania, thirty- 

 nine and a quarter per cent in the large towns, and but twenty-one per cent in the 

 rural districts. The politicians in this state, finding themselves losing a representa- 

 tive in the new ratio, while Pennsylvania gains two, have, in alarm, actually deigned 

 to inquire into the growth of the agricultural class, with some little attention. They 

 have not generally arrived Jit the truth, however, which is, that Pennsylvania is, as a 

 state, much better farmed than New-York, and hence the agricultural population in- 

 creases much faster. 



It is a painful truth, that both the press and the more active minds of the country 

 at large, are strikingly ignorant of the condition of agriculture in all the older states, 

 and one no less painful, that the farmers, who are not ignorant of it, are as a body, 

 not intelligent enough to know how to remedy the evil. 



" And what is that evil? " many of our readers will doubtless inquire. We answer, 

 the miserable system of farming steadily pursued by eight-tenths of all the farmers of 

 this country, since its first settlement : a system which proceeds upon the principle of 

 taking as many crops from the land with as little manure as possible — until its produc- 

 tive powers are exhausted, and then emigrating to some part of the country where 



they can apply the same practice to a new soil. It requires far less knowledge and 

 capital to wear out one good soil and abandon it for another, than to cultivate a good 

 soil so as to maintain its productive powers from year to year, unimpaired. Accord 

 the emigration is always "to the west." There, is ever the Arcadia 



merican farmer ; there are the acres which need but to be broken up by the pi 



