FARMERS' REGISTER 



765 



[Note A.— Page 717.] 



Upon a review of tho foregoing essays, originally of- 

 fered to Ihe public in a newspaper, witliout foreseeing 

 that tliey would appear in a boolc, a l'i;w expressions 

 have been expunged, lest their political doctrines should 

 be ascribed to parly motives. These proceeded from 

 an opinion, that the inculcation of sound political prin- 

 ciples, was the only mode of avoiding the evils incident 

 to A blind zeal in favor of the projects of any set of 

 men exercising power ; or of preserving a consistency 

 between professions and actions. To a union between 

 public interest and public knowledge, the world is in- 

 debted for the benefit it has derived from the Grecian and 

 Roman republics, and to the want of such a union, the 

 regions which once sustained them, ibr their present 

 stale of slavery. No association to indict or to avoid 

 oppression, can succeed, if it is ignorant of the means 

 for procuring success in both objects. Political know- 

 ledge is as necessary to the people for one end, as to 

 princes, orders, tactions, and usurpers for the other. 

 Without it, the lords of the soil in the United States, 

 must gradually become the slaves of some legal aristo- 

 cracy ; and, exposed by political ignorance to the rapine 

 of an endless catalogue of exclusive factitious in- 

 terests, would soon resemble monkeys stripped by the 

 superior intelligence of man, of diamonds tliey had dug 

 out of the earth. As agriculture, with its dependen- 

 cies, almost covers the whole public interest ol the 

 United States, so degrading a consequence of its politi- 

 cal ignorance, demonstrates how intimate its connex- 

 ion ought to be with politics. The lirst produces; the 

 latter secures. Exclusive political knowledge, creates 

 exclusive legal interest. A complete agricultural 

 treatise would comprise the soundest agricultural prin- 

 ciples, chemical, experimental and political ; and the 

 inutility of the two hrst items might be more plausibly 

 asserted, because they only teach men how to labor, 

 than that of tlie last, which teaches them how to live 

 happily. 



Funding, legal enrichment of all kinds, and the per- 

 petual effort of those who exercise power to increase 

 it, may here, as every where else, enslave the majority 

 and the public interest. By funding only, agriculture 

 may be soon made tiibutary to the dealers in credit, 

 chiefly located by the nature of their employment in a 

 few large cities. The dispersed situation of the agri- 

 cultural and of every general interest, renders its share 

 of the vast acquisitions to be made by the credit trade, 

 trifling ; and the circumstance of its constituting the 

 chief item of the general interest, renders its share of 

 the contributions to support it enormous. It is a trade 

 for getting premiums and interest without money, upon 

 the credit of those who pay both ; and for inflicting 

 an annual tribute on those who have the credit, until 

 they prove its goodness by paying coin for paper, if 

 agriculture or ihe public interest borrows ten millions 

 in paper notes, furnished by the partnership between 

 banking and funding, at a premium often per centum, 

 and an annual iiitei-est of six, in fifteen years it pays 

 a sum in specie equal to the debt, but both the debt 

 and annual tribute still remain. The public interest 

 cannot transform itself into an exclusive interest for 

 carrying on this credit trade, because it must be the 

 payer not the receiver ; nor can it have any tiling of 

 consequence to lend, because the projects requiring 

 loans, incapacitate it for a lender, especially so far as 

 it is agricultural. A liability to pay, and an inability 

 to lend, generate exactly the same relative situation, 

 between these two interests, which subsists between 

 two nations, when one is tributary to the other. Upon 



ment for a good premium and a perpetual interest, for 

 which premium and interest the only consideration 

 they pay, is an adherence to the will of the donor, 

 against the will of the public interest, by which the 

 donation is paid. The impoverishment produced by 

 this species of tribute, is demonstrated by the difl'er- 

 ence in the ])rice of products in the paying and receiv- 

 ing districts, by their difi'erent agricwliural aj.pear- 

 ances, and by emigrations. The efiectsof a tribute, col- 

 lected in distant provinces, and expended at particular 

 places, are uniformly the same, inflicted either by a 

 tyrant or a patriot. Ought not agriculture to under- 

 stand this i)olitical machine ? 



An amendment of the constitution for empowering 

 the general government to tax exports and to make 

 local regulations, would comprise a boundless power of 

 sacrificing agricultui-al and exporting districts to the 

 interest of credit dealers, to transitory political projects 

 of men in power, and to the passions of non-exporting 

 districts ; and although the apparent favors to the lat- 

 ter would be delusive and entrapping, they would suf- 

 fice to divide agriculture itself, into two parties neu- 

 tralizing each other's defensive ability, and to subject 

 both, like all large inert bodies, to less powerful, but 

 more intelligent and active exclusive interests. Ought 

 it not to understand political principles to meet occur- 

 rences of this kind? 



As no interest covering the majority of a nation 

 can avoid oppression, except under a free form of go- 

 vernment, because the end of every other form, is to 

 foster partial interests, should not agriculture be able 

 to see the importance of maintaining the division of 

 |)ower between the general and state governments? 

 The latter are her intimate associates and allies. The 

 general government is already in a far greater degree 

 the associate and ally of patronage, funding, armies, 

 and of many other interests subsisting upon her. If it 

 should by new powers be enabled to enlist still more 

 of such dangerous auxiliaries, or to break over the 

 boundary between general and local concerns, in a 

 single place, the breach will produce consequences 

 similar to those produced by that of the Tartars in the 

 great wall of the Chinese. 



A fanatical love or hatred of individuals or parties is 

 equally inconsistent with a free form of government. 

 Political enthusiasm enslaves parlies to leaders, as reli- 

 gion enslaves sectaries to priests. Politicians never 

 love or hate from passion. All their enmities and con- 

 nexions flow from interest, according to which they 

 reconcile or break them, without any of those sensi- 

 bilities excited in ignorance by its own imaginary idols. 

 As tiiis idolatry is a universal cause of oppression, 

 should the truth be concealed from agriculture, that 

 she may become the victim of that enthusiastic con- 

 fidence, which falsehood and mystery only are able to 

 inspire? A political bigot is as certainly the slave of 

 some party leader, as a religious bigot is of some 

 priest. 



These few cases are cited to show, (hat agriculture, 

 without political knowledge, cannot expect justice, or 

 retain liberty. The correctness of the political opi- 

 nions expressed in these essays is another question. 

 The author has suggested such as his mind suggested 

 to him, to awaken agriculture to the importance of 

 this s))ecies of knowledge to its prosperity and happi- 

 ness, that it may by its own understanding detect his 

 errors or its apathy. 



[Note B.— Page 719] 



The slave-holding states have been deterred from 

 making agricultural improvements, and establishing 

 the credit of this liability, that of' the paper loaned to I any tolerable system of police for the management of 

 governments, depends. The government in fact gives i slaves, by the lazy and hopeless conclusion, that the de- 

 the public credit to associations for vending paper struction of their lands, and the irregularities of their 

 stock, which these associations sell back to the govern- I negroes, were incurable consequences of slavery. A 

 Vol. V1II.-97 



