336 AND IS DIMINISHING. 



sensible. The main reasons for this opinion, as I have 

 already given them in Chap. VII., are 1st, That the 

 virgin soils are already, to a considerable extent, exhausted 

 of their first freshness, and that a comparatively expensive 

 culture, likely to make corn more costly, must be adopted, 

 if their productiveness is to be brought back and main 

 tained ; 2d, That the new settlers live poorly and hardly 

 at first, and, as their wheat is the only thing that they 

 have to sell, confine themselves for some seasons to pota 

 toes, buckwheat, and Indian corn, and send the wheat to 

 market ; but as they become more easy in their circum 

 stances, retain more of this grain for their own consump 

 tion, while they produce it also at a greater cost : and 

 3d, That as the population increases, that of wheat- 

 consuming individuals, who do not raise their own 

 food, increases also, and thus every year a larger pro 

 portion of wheaten food will be required and retained at 

 home. 



If the population of the United States, exclusive 

 of California, be now nearly 24,000,000, and if it be 

 increasing, as is said, at the rate of 1,000,000 a-year, 

 so as to promise to these States in 1860 a popula 

 tion of 34,000,000, then it is very safe, I think, to say 

 that in 1860 their wheat-exporting capability will have 

 become so small as to give our British farmers very 

 little cause for apprehension. 



From the important English as well as American 

 interests which are involved in this discussion, the reader 

 will understand how much reason we have to be satisfied 

 with the establishment of the agricultural department at 

 Washington, to wish that it may have the pecuniary 

 means and the intellectual ability both to collect and to 

 diffuse accurate information, and, in regard to some of 

 its objects at least, to desire that our Government should 

 imitate the example of the Federal Government of the 

 United States. 



