700 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



Legislatures must begin to notice and discuss 

 the state of agriculture, before they can discover 

 or remove the causes of the cadaverous counte- 

 nance exhibited by the soil. These causes lie 

 concealed in the laws. It is strenuously contend- 

 ed that laws are able to administer prosperity or 

 decay to oecupations of inferior utility to man, and 

 less interesting to nations in general, and to the 

 United States in pariicular, by exciting or discour- 

 aging the degree of ardor, inspired by an equal 

 looting between the various objects of indusirj'. 

 Such an equipoise of justice among occupations, 

 is in fact an equipoise of liberty among men, and 

 constitutes the only sound test of a I'ree govern- 

 ment. But it is admitted that laws may both create 

 and bestow upon particular interests wealth and 

 power, and j'et if we even exclude from the ques- 

 tion the injuries thence resulting to other interest?, 

 it ought to be considered that they gradually sup- 

 press the idea of a government guided by the 

 comraon good, and plant in its place by a succes- 

 sion of precedents, a system of partiality to be ex- 

 ercised by power without limitation, and capable of 

 demolishing every barrier against usurpation and 

 tyranny. 



If our government, however, will usurp a 

 boundless sovereignty over the industry and pro- 

 perty of individuals, the policy of invading the 

 great province of agriculture, to gather spoils for 

 enriching a number of little barren districts, is still 

 to be questioned. If agriculiure, for instance, is 

 as insignificant as banking, it has the same claim 

 to legal favor; if less so this claim becomes 

 stronger. From what motives have legal par- 

 tialities in all countries selected their lavoriies? 

 Even religion has often been converted into the 

 spirit of lolly, or the instrument of wickedness. 

 Will they regard human occupations with more 

 veneration? These only are lelt in our country 

 exposed lo the same motives which have begotten 

 the whole tribe of legal partialities abroad, and 

 are therelbre more likely to be laid hold of with 

 furious eagerness, and to be mangled with barba- 

 rous outrage. 



Already, many tnpmbers of the body politic, 

 and even sundry excrescences which ought to be 

 amputated, are excited up to a lever, and agricul- 

 ture chilled at the heart by drafts to bestow an 

 unnatural degree of heat upon leps valuable or 

 pernicious extremities. \f our health was sound 

 during the presidency of Washington, what must 

 it now be? The pulsation has increased six fold 

 in the limb of taxation ; in the excrescence of 

 banking, fifty fold ; in that of proiecting duties 

 enormously; and in the patronage lin)b, its flut- 

 lerings have become so rapid and indistinct, that 

 congress have ordered a book to be compiled, to ex- 

 plain what may be called the logarithms of patron- 

 age. A healthy state of society must consist in that 

 equable pulsation throughout all its parts, produced 

 by an equipoise of justice, favor and protection 

 among its several interests. Unless this is restored 

 by amputations, retrenchmenie, and evacuaiions, 

 agriculture cannot for ages exhibit on the soil, an 

 equivalent degree of prosperiiy, which she ought 

 in common with other interests to derive from the 

 revolution. 



Finally, if the defence of partial laws, " that the 

 sufferings they intlict on one person or class, ou<;ht 

 to be balanced against the acquisitions they bestow 

 on another," though liitse, immoral and tyrannical. 



are allowed to be true, virtuous, and i'alr, yet it 

 ought at least to he examined l)y the principle it 

 asserts. Compare then the gain Irom a bounty 

 on snuH', with the loss sustained by a lax on barn^^ 

 The latter in some states, owing to the deficiency 

 of this agricultural manulijcture, amounts proba- 

 bly upon grain only, to twenty per centum annu- 

 ally. Add to this loss the whole mass of agricul- 

 tural suffering, arising from the whole deprivaiion 

 of capital, and compare the total, wiih the total 

 gain to manuliiclures from protecting duties. In 

 fact, the principle resorted lo (or defence by partial 

 laws, ever was and ever will be used by govern- 

 ments, only to increase their power, by accumu- 

 lating money at the cost of naiions, to be wasted 

 in extravagance or employed still more pernicious- 

 ly, in extending patronage, cr spreading corrup- 

 tion. Under shelter of the delusion, they advance 

 step by step towards arbitrary power, and that in- 

 terest which is most productive, and covers a ma- 

 jority, inevitably becomes its victim, unless it de- 

 tects the fraud. Agriculture can never flourish, 

 unless it applies a very different principle boih to 

 its land and its government, namely, '' that re- 

 newal must constantly follow close upon the heels 

 of decay, either to maintain fertility or lo avoid op- 

 pression." 



PREFACE. 



BY THE PUBLISHER OF THE THIRD EDITION. 



The publisher of the following essays is the first 

 who has offered to ihe public patronage an expe- 

 rimental composition, adapted to (he soil, climate 

 and agriculture of the greater portion of the 

 United Slates ; and so (iir as his knowledge ex- 

 tends, it is the first of the kind which this great 

 district of country has produced. He is not qua- 

 lified to judge of its merit, and can only infer horn 

 its being the work of a successful practical farmer, 

 and not the ofL-pnng of interest or theory, that 

 every purchaser will be reimbursed his money 

 many fold. But, however this may be, the pub- 

 lisher respectfully states, that rude inventions have 

 terminated in great public good ; and that the 

 deficienc)' of graphical merit in the agricultural 

 C(>untry, for which the coiijposiiion was intended, 

 is almost as strong a recommendation of this effort 

 towards improvement, as the hieroglyphics of an- 

 tiquity, were of those made lor the discovery of 

 letters. An encouragement of small improve- 

 ments is the parent of [erfoction in every art and 

 science, and as agriculture is the queen of the 

 whole circle, the publisher has thought it his duty 

 to give the public an opportimity of awakening 

 better talents and greater exertions, for occupying 

 the extensive space between its present and a de- 

 sirable condition. 



The United States have been charged with a 

 dearth of orijiinal compositions. Their reach of 

 European books is the reason of the fact, so far as 

 it extends to moral subjects ; whilst the mul'itude, 

 novelty and usefulness of their mechanical inven- 

 tions, repels an insinuation, that it arises from a 

 want of genius or industry. Tlie strongest ground 

 of the charge is, the deficiency of native booka 



