16 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



and sometimes by whole regions. This compels those practicing Agricul- 

 ture, both as individuals and masses, to make that " division of labor" 

 which, as in the mechanic arts, gives a better knowledge of its principles 

 and a greater expertness in its practical manipulations. It also creates 

 the necessity of exchange. Exchange is commerce, and commerce begets 

 and diffuses civilization. 



Agricultural production, then, should be controlled by the demand or 

 want, and by the adaptation of the country to such production. It would 

 "he absurd, for example, for New-York to attempt to raise its own rice 

 and cotton, instead of exchanging the surplus of what it can most readily 

 produce for that rice and cotton, or selling its surplus where it is wanted, 

 and buying the rice and cotton with the proceeds. But, on the other hand, 

 it would be equally absurd for New- York to be dependent on South 

 America or Australia for her wools, when she can raise that staple just as 

 well as those countries, and thus save paying for transportation and the 

 hire or commission of the agents of exchange. 



Though Nature both indicates and limits the production of staples by 

 soils and climates, she too rigidly enforces the primal curse, or perhaps 

 we should say blessing, of labor, to bring forth each, indigenously, in the 

 regions adapted to it, or ever to place them there, unless transported by 

 the enterprise and industry of man. The potato and maize were a recent 

 gift from this continent to the eastern. The debt has been repaid by rice, 

 the sugar cane, the horse, the cow, the sheep, and a multitude of other 

 plants and animals. How singular is the history of some of their deporta- 

 tions ! The sugar cane, now furnishing an important staple in some of our 

 own Southern States, originated in the eastern confines of Asia ; was noF 

 vouchsafed to the Greek and Roman ; traveled into Arabia about the 

 last of the thirteenth century ; passed thence into Africa ; was carried 

 by the Moors into Spain ; by the Spaniards and Portuguese into the West 

 India Islands ; and thence we received it. Rice, the great staple of 

 your own State, sir, a plant of which it has been said that it " has altered 

 the face of the globe and the destiny of nations," originated also in Asia, 

 and has traveled by the same slow stages, until it has reached that low 

 zone which skirts our south-eastern shores, to render its vast marshes, oth- 

 erwise useless, as profitably productive as the best grain or cotton lands 

 of the Southern States. 



Hero, sir, we find an instructive lesson. Other regions there are in our 

 Southern States, now, nearly as useless as would be her " hammocks " 

 without rice, inviting the introduction of some other great staple to sup- 

 ply, if feasible, a home demand, and a surplus for profitable exportation. 

 If this great object can be achieved, and by the same means, the husbandry 

 of the regions now under cultivation be made to assume that mixed and 

 convertible character which will both add to their present proceeds, and 

 better sustain their fertility, for future demands on them, a benefit will be 

 conferred on the South the present and final results of which it would 

 be difficult to overestimate. Repudiating theoretic speculation and vague 

 conjecture advancing just so far and no farther than we find our way 

 illumined by the broad and certain light of facts, let us inquire what im 

 portant staple there is, not now extensively produced at the South, which 

 would come within and at the same time fill the requirements I have men- 

 tioned. 



Woolen fabrics constitute an important item in the imports of the South- 

 ern States, and for these they exchange the proceeds of no inconsiderable 

 proportion of their industry with the Northern States and with Europe. 



The following table will exhibit the population, and the amount of home 



