714 



FARMERS' REGtSTER. 



Prosperity, neither in raanuCacturee, nor in pa- 

 per epecuialions, is ever expected without a capi- 

 tal, and yet capital \s filched (rom a;sricullure, un- 

 der the pretence that it will produce her prosperity. 

 The capital thus filched is made by laws to yield a 

 better profit without labor, than it could with it, and 

 becomes a premium offered by government to those 

 who desert the labors of atrriculture. Hence we 

 see capital flying (rom the fields, to the legal mo- 

 nopolies, banking and manufacturing. The laws 

 have et^tablished a thousand modes by which 

 capital will produce quicker and larger profits, than 

 when employed in the slow improvements of 

 agriculture. These bribes oH'ered to its deserters 

 have already produced the most ruinous conse- 

 quences. Avarice every where seizes them with 

 avidity, and rails at agriculture, as sordid and un- 

 patriotic, for wishing to withhold them, as the 

 vulture might have railed at Prometheus, for 

 wishing to keep his Hver. The best informed 

 agriculturists are driven for self-defence, or se- 

 duced by the temptations of the wealth with 

 which they are solicited, to sell their lands, which 

 require labor, for the purchase of a better profit 

 requiring none ; or at least to divert to this object 

 whatever capital accident or industry may have 

 thrown into their hands. And the capital thus 

 drained from the uses of agriculture, by this irre- 

 sistible and perpetual legal S3'stem, has reduced 

 it to a skeleton lor want of nourishment. 



Strickland, the English farmer, who came to this 

 country with the intention of escaping li-om the 

 agricultural oppressions of his own. and returned 

 distrusted, discovered and described this death- 

 inflicting operation in ihe52d and 53d pages of 

 his pamphlet, "Belore the revolution," says he, 

 "tlie capital of the country was vested in the lands, 

 and the landed proprietors held the first rank in 

 the country for opulence and information, and in 

 general received the best education which Ame- 

 rica, and not unfrequently, Europe, could aflbrd 

 them," Now, " the capital, as well as the govern- 

 ment of the country has slipped out of the hands 

 of land owners; and these new people are em- 

 ployed in very diflisrent, and, in the present state 

 of things, more productive speculations than the 

 cultivation of lands; in speculations frequently at 

 variance with the best interests of the country. In 

 some of the states, the gentlemen of landed pro- 

 perty have passed into perfect oblivion ; in none 

 do they bear the sway, or even possess their due 

 share of influence." On the eleventh day of 

 January, 1797, a committee was raised in con- 

 gress for the promotion of agriculture, who report- 

 ed : "That the encouragement of agriculture is 

 an object highly worthy the public attention, as 

 it constitutes the most useful employment for our 

 citizens, is the basis of manufactures and com- 

 merce, and the richest source of national wealth 

 and prosperity — and that the science of agriculture 

 was in its infancy." One would have"^ thouCThi 

 that these eentimenis would have suggested the 

 folly of starving this useful infiinf, to f"atlen the 

 pernicious legal infant called capital; of com- 

 pressing one into a dwarf, and stretching the other 

 into a giant. No such thing. It vvas"^dandled a 

 little. A toy for its amusement called the " Ame- 

 rican Society of Agriculture," was talked of. This 

 toy was found to be unconstitutional, because it 

 would add but liiile to the power of the general 

 government, and the infant was turned to <Traze 



in impoverished fields. The constitution was 

 construed to exclude congress from the power of 

 fostering agriculture by patents or bounties, and 

 to give it the power of lijstering banks and manu- 

 factures by patents and bounties; and a republican 

 and agricultural people plunged into this absurdity 

 to advance the project of a statesman in favor of 

 monarchy. Agriculture, in its floundering, like an 

 ox whilst breaking, gave the statesman a tumble, 

 and then tamely submitted to the yoke he had 

 fashioned. 



As agricultural improvements cannot be made 

 without capital ; as capital will not be employed 

 in them, if it can find more profitable employment; 

 as the laws have created a variety of employ- 

 ments (or capital, attracting it by bounties and 

 premiums drawn Irom agriculture ; and as this 

 subtraction from one and addition to the others 

 have caused capital invested under such legal 

 patronage to be more profitable than when em- 

 ployed in agricultural improvements, it follows, 

 that such improvements cannot take place, whilst 

 a policy so completely fitted to counteract them, 

 remains. Bring before your mind some twenty 

 or thirty modes of employing capital, and imagine 

 that one of ihem produces the least profit and 

 most toil ; and further, that this one is oppressed 

 in various ways to advance the prosperity of all 

 the rest. Could one of the emblems of agriculture 

 i himself (mentioned in the last number) conceive, 

 that capital would fly from all the profitable modes 

 to acquire comparative penury and exclusive toil 

 in the service of the unprofitable mode ; or be 

 persuaded, that an utter destitution of capital can 

 advance the prosperity of this one mode, whilst 

 he is told on all hands, that capital alone can ad- 

 vance that of every other 7 This is not an ima- 

 ginary, but a real case. 



The project of creating a race of capitalists, as 

 an engine to endow the government with more 

 power, seems to me to be unfavorable to all the 

 callings and interests of society, save to the calling 

 of governing, and the calling ofcapilalists. ^\'hilst 

 agriculture is more particularly impoverished by 

 it, that impoverishment contains a resulting blow 

 for every thina which a fertile country and a flou- 

 rishing agriculture nurtures ; and the bounty of 

 protecting duties will inflict upon the manufactur- 

 ers themselves, or real workmen, in lieu o( com- 

 fort and competence, which a multitude of them 

 would gain by free industry, an impossibility of 

 obtaining either, with the cor;solatory prospect of 

 the vast wealth of their masters the capitalists. 



Under the same system, England, the most 



fertile country in the world, wants bread. Arthur 



Young states, that a portion of that country, 



suflicing, if cultivated, to make England a great 



exporter of bread stufl, lies uncultivated. The 



average crop of wheat in England is about 35 



bushels an acre, and the average price about 15s. 



t a bushel sleiling. Yet capital finds better em- 



I ployment under this system there, than in agricul- 



i ture. This exorbitant price is therefore an in- 



j sufficient equivalent for the oppression it suffers 



li-om the system. The average crop of wheat in 



I some states is as low as five, in none above ten 



! bushels to the acre, and the average price about 



i five shillings sterling. Will one seventh or one 



(burth of the crops, and one third of the price 



I here, enable agriculture to bear a system, under 



I which, with a product and price, ten or twenty 



