FMPROVING OUR AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY. 2G^, 



the cultivation of his soil profitable. For this reason we often 

 gee respectable, intelligent, and industrious farmers living in a 

 state of penury and hard labor : and at last, from some unfavor- 

 able seasons, and other incidental misfortunes, sinking under 

 the weight of accumulated butdens. 



There are, it is true, many farmers scattered over our wide 

 extended country, who possess c|pital sufficient, and whose 

 wisdom and industry enable them to cultivate extensive iarms 

 with success. But the establishments of that class of farmers 

 by the policy of our government, are liable to be dissolved, to 

 be subdivided among their descendants, and eventually among 

 other citizens. It is to the wisdom, and success of the small 

 kind owner, the common farmer, that our republic will event- 

 ually owe its prosperity, the dignity of its character, and the 

 perpetuity of its privileges. The occupancy of many very large 

 farms by individuals, can never be expected to characterise the 

 prosperity of ouj Republic. The value and respectability of 

 our population will diminish in proportion to the unequal distri- 

 bution of our lands. 



But our farmers are continually hazarding the loss of 

 the lands they possess, by cultivating so much, and in such 

 a manner, that no one acre yields to them an adequate 

 remuneration for their toil and expense. Their embarrass- 

 ments consequently accumulate, untill they are forced to sell 

 their farms to enable them to meet the claims of their creditors ; 

 or if they are not driven to this extremity, they are often sub- 

 jected to the evil of toiling through the year, without obtaining 

 from their industry a competency to defray the current expen- 

 ses of their living. 



It is believed that on the same number of acres, the expense 

 of raising a poor crop is generally nearly as much as that of 

 raising a large one. There is the same expended in fencing — 

 the same in taxes — the same quantity of seed sown — and per- 

 haps nearly the same expended in ploughing — and the same, 

 or more, labor in threshing ;— and generally, as much or more- 

 labor in the whole process of tillage. 



