20 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



that every cultivated spot might furnish its proportion of the 

 great and various material from which man finds food and 

 raiment — wheat from the Black Sea, and wheat from Illinois ; 

 cotton from India, and cotton from Georgia ; hemp from Russia, 

 and hemp from Kentucky — for a common purpose. 



Turn your eyes to that great empire which occupies all 

 Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, and whose commerce and 

 manufactures are not large, but whose semi-barbarous agricul- 

 ture gives her strength at home, and power of defence, at the 

 same time that it establishes her importance to more active and 

 civilized nations, and maintains with them her peaceful rela- 

 tions. Russia gives small cause for war. She is the ally of 

 nations whose productions are smaller, and whose manufactures 

 are larger. Her soil is fertile — consisting of a soft, black 

 mould, of great depth, and generally on a sandy bottom. Her 

 climate is not propitious — the seasons being short, and often 

 attended with violent summer rains, boisterous winds, and con- 

 tinual autumn fogs. Her social condition is by no means 

 calculated to secure universal prosperity, or industry and activ- 

 ity. Landed property there is almost everywhere in large 

 tracts, and is either the property of the Emperor, the religious 

 and civil corporations, or the nobles. There are a few free 

 natives, who have purchased their liberties, and some foreign- 

 ers, especially Germans, who have landed estates, but these are 

 comparatively of no account. In the Ukraine, within the last 

 thirty years, have been introduced, on the government estates, 

 a number of foreigners, from most countries of Europe, who 

 may be considered as proprietors. These occupy the lands on 

 leases of a hundred years or upwards, at little or no rent, on 

 condition of peopling and cultivating them, and residing there. 

 In the country part of Russia, there is no middle class between 

 the nobles, including the priests, and the slaves. Estates are, 

 therefore, either cultivated directly by the proprietors, acting 

 as their own stewards — indirectly, by letting them to agents or 

 factors, as in Poland and Ireland — or by dividing them in small 

 portions among the peasantry. In general, the proprietor is his 

 own agent and farmer, for a great part of his estate ; and the 

 rest he lets to his slaves at certain rates of labor, corn, personal 

 services, and sometimes a little money. These slaves, it is to 

 be observed, are as much his property as the soil, and in seasons 



