204 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



[No. 4. 



per cent, but from this some deductions are to be 

 made. Building lots in the principal streets in 

 Philadelphia, sell at £60 per foot in front, and are 

 from one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet 

 in depth; before I led Philadelphia, I heard of 

 one being sold for £72 per loot in front. 



Land upon the Delaware, and the navigable wa- 

 ters that run into it,sell in each state for from £4 10s. 

 to £5 12s. 6d. At two or three miles from water- 

 carriage, at £2 14s. to £3 3s. These last pri( es 

 I have, iound to hold through the greatest part of 

 the old settled tracts of Jersey and Pennsylvania, 

 but something lower as the situations are less con- 

 venient. 



About York, among the Germans, land sells as 

 high as £ 15 to £ 18 per acre: in the neighborhood 

 of Lancaster, from £12 to £15; near the town, 

 for £ 18. I saw a considerable farm, one mile and 

 a half distant from it, that had just then been pur- 

 chased at the last price; water-meadow land will 

 sell there for £21 per acre; the industry and par- 

 simony of these people having raised the value of 

 land in their neighborhood at least two hundred 

 percent. 



The best land in Jersey, and in that part of 

 Pennsylvania which is east of the mountains, ex- 

 clusive of the German tract, may be settled at 

 about £4 per acre: they certainly average some- 

 thing more than the old part of New York, this 

 tract not being mixed with any barren mountains, 

 and being less rocky and broken. 



The back-lands of Pennsylvania sell for consid- 

 erably less than those of New York: from what 

 information I could obtain, I could not. state them 

 at more than 3s. or 4s. per acre; a great quantity 

 was upon sale for less; the tenure of them is less 

 satisfactory than of those of New York, the titles 

 less to be relied upon, and the whole having less 

 credit, many egregious frauds having been com- 

 mitted upon purchasers, particularly those in Eu- 

 rope. 



Very little land is let, few of the. people born in 

 the country being ever willing to become tenants, 

 and farmers from England, who alone would be 

 tenants of any value, are very few in number, and 

 those, as far as I canfind, in general not of a very res- 

 pectable description. Custom or ignorance can alone 

 cause this objection; since they who purchase land 

 purchase it with money that would otherwise afford 

 them seven or eight per cent, at the least; whereas if 

 they rented land, it would be at a rate that would 

 not pay more to the owners of it, than an interest 

 oi three or four per cent.; a great gain this to the 

 tenant, who would besides have many indi- 

 gencies. So great is the difficulty of procuring 

 regular tenants, that people here, who possess 

 more land than they choose to occupy, or can cul- 

 tivate themselves, are getting much into the way 

 of letting it upon shares; a system which nothing 

 but extreme poverty, or extreme ignorance, can 

 vindicate. 



This evil is rapidly increasing; an instance of 

 this tenure I have before noticed at. Boston. I 

 have not yet. heard of any in New York; but in 

 Jersey and Pennsylvania instances are too fre- 

 quent; to the south of these states I have met with 

 none. 



A country thus occupied must ever be in the 

 worst cultivation, and both owner and occupier in 

 a state of poverty. The terms of this tenure are 

 various, according as agreements can be made; in 



some instances, the owner finds half the seed, and 

 half the live stock, the tenant every thing else; 

 and he has half the produce; in other instances, 

 the owners find half the live stock, and have one- 

 third of the produce, &c. 



Want of capital in tenants, the difficulty of pro- 

 curing them, and their ignorance when procured, 

 was the cause assigned for this wretched mode of 

 occupation; but it was observed, that under this 

 tenure, the owner could command the mode of 

 cultivation; and that therefore, such lands were 

 better cultivated than others: this, however, pre- 

 sumes the landlord to be more intelligent than his 

 tenant. The extent of the evils arising from this 

 mode of occupancy, many parts of Europe suffi- 

 ciently show: wherever it is found, poverty, and 

 the worst of cultivation attend ir, as ever must be 

 the case, where the interest of the owner and the 

 occupier are at eternal variance; here, the owner 

 purchases the worst of stock, because it is the 

 cheapest, and another is to have the management 

 of it; and the occupier bestows the least labor, 

 because another is to have half the profit of it. 

 It was scarcely to haVe been expected, that such 

 a system should have crossed the Atlantic. 



DELAWARE AND MARYLASD 



May with propriety be joined together. The 

 former is of small extent, and occupies only one- 

 halt' of that peninsula which lies between the two 

 great eestuaries of Delaware and Chesapeake, 

 each side of which peninsula much resembles the 

 other. The whole ol* Delaware, and the adjoin- 

 ing part of Maryland, is a low country, apparent- 

 ly the creation of waters. It has in general a ten- 

 dency to sand, is not much elevated above the sea, 

 is fertile upon Ihe coast, but swampy and barren 

 within land. That part of Maryland that lies up- 

 on the opposite side of the Chesapeake, is in gene- 

 ral sandy and gravelly; in places elevated into 

 hills generally barren; and much worn out with 

 the cultivation of tobacco. 



The farther it proceeds west, till it arrives at the 

 mountains, the more fertile it becomes, is lesa 

 sandy, and at last, about Frederick, changes to 

 that "rich, red, friable loam, before noticed in the 

 last states, here generally lying upon a steatite 

 or soap-rock, which in many places rises to the 

 surface. These two states are the first in proceed- 

 ing towards the south, in which negroes abound, 

 and in which the evils of slavery first appear, 

 though here laying no very heavy burden upon 

 those who are doomed to bear it; and here, sla- 

 very is rapidly giving way to emancipation. This 

 state has no back-lands, and no territory of any 

 great value west of the mountains, as in that part 

 the Potomac, its southern boundary, and the 

 Pennsylvania line its northern, contract within a 

 very narrow space. 



As the metropolis of the American Union is 

 now building in this state, and is to become the 

 seat of government in the first year of the next 

 century ,"a very considerable rise in the price of 

 land, and some improvement in the cultivation, 

 will probably soon take place. 



About Dover, in Delaware, land sells for £3 

 12s. per acre. About Buck's tavern, £3 18s. 

 One thousand seven hundred acres, a few miles 

 below Wilmington, were lately sold at £4 per 

 acre. An English gentleman lately bought some 

 on the Delaware, at £7 4s. but it was supposed 



