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only consider the short period of time during which we have been driven 

 to them by the suicidal policy of England. The prohibiting duties we 

 lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us 

 to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every good 

 citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves, 

 without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse 

 into foreign dependency. And this circumstance may be worthy of your 

 consideration, should you continue in the disposition to emigrate to 

 this country. Your manufactory of cotton, on a moderate scale com- 

 bined with a farm, might be prefei-able to either singly, and the one 

 or the other might become principal, as experience should recommend. 

 Cotton ready spun is in ready demand, and if woven, still more so. 



I will proceed now to answer the inquiries which respect your views 

 of removal; and I am glad that, in looking over our map, your eye has 

 been attracted by the village of Charlottesville, because I am better 

 acquainted with that than any other portion of the United States, being 

 within three or four miles of the place of my birth and residence. It 

 is a portion of country ¥/hich certainly possesses great advantages. 

 Its soil is equal in natural fertility to any high lands I have ever 

 seen; it is red and hilly, very like much of the country of Champagne 

 and Burgundy, on the route of Sens, Vermanton, Vitteaux, Dijon, and 

 along the Cote to Chagny, excellently adapted to wheat, maize, and 

 clover; like all mountainous countries it is perfectly healthy, liable 

 to no agues and fevers, or to any particular epidemic, as is evidenced 

 by the robust constitution of its inhabitants, and their numerous 

 families. As many instances of nonagenaires exist habitually in this 

 neighborhood as in the same degree of population anywhere. Its tem- 

 perature may be considered as a medium of that of the United States. . . . 

 On an average of seven years I have found our snov/s amount in the 

 whole to fifteen inches depth, and to cover the ground fifteen days; 

 these, with the rains, give us four feet of water in the year. The 

 garden pea, which vie are now sowing, comes to table about the 12th 

 of May; strawberries and cherries about the same time; asparagus the 

 1st of April. The artichoke stands the winter without cover; lettuce 

 and endive with a slight one of bushes, and often without any; and 

 the fig, protected by a little straw, begins to ripen in July; if un- 

 protected, not till the 1st of September. There is navigation for 

 boats of six tons from Charlottesville to Richmond, the nearest tide- 

 water, and principal market for our produce. The country is what we 

 call well inhabited, there being in our county, Albemarle, of about 

 seven hundred and fifty square miles, about twenty thousand inhabit- 

 ants, or twenty-seven to a square mile, of whom, however, one half 

 are people of color, either slaves or free. The society is much better 

 than is common in country situations; perhaps there is not a better 

 country society in the United States. But do not imagine this a 

 Parisian or an academical society. It consists of plain, honest. 



