264 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 5. 



RECAPITULATION. 



In the state of New York, 

 Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, 

 Virginia (east of the Blue Ridge,) 

 Ditto (west of ditto,) 



The average of the above, according to the 

 number of districts, is nine bushels and three-quar- 

 ters of wheat per acre; but as the first and last dis- 

 trict, which are the most, productive, are consider- 

 ably less in extent than the two which are the least 

 productive, the average of the whole, in propor- 

 tion to the extent of surface, cannot be estimated 

 at more than nine bushels per acre; to the other 

 crops it is not necessary to pay attention. Now, 

 that a country situated in the finest latitudes of the 

 globe, with a soil certainly, by nature, as capable 

 of producing, as the climate is of bringing to ma- 

 tin ity,far greater crops, and certainly, in both res- 

 pects, better calculated for grain than many parts 

 of Europe, which produce from double to treble 

 the quantity on an average, should yield crops 

 which there, would be looked upon as scarce worth 

 the collection, renders the cause of it deserving of 

 our notice. 



When inquiring into the subject, among the 

 most intelligent people of the different states, I 

 lbund this inferiority pretty generally attributed to 

 a deficiency in the vegetative powers of the soil: 

 it was said that a country, fresh out of the hands 

 of nature, was not fertile; that it would bear a few 

 tolerable crops when first cleared, but soon ceased 

 to do it; and that it required the cultivation of ages, 

 to render it as fruitful as old countries; so little were 

 the best informed aware of their own defects 

 the merits of the soil, or willing to acknowledge 

 either of them. Some of the northern states, 

 who remembered the days of greater fertility, at- 

 tributed the visible decline to the depredations of 

 the Hessian fly; but in Virginia, they scarcely 

 know this insignificant animal, and therefore on it 

 cannot cast the blame; and Virginia has probably 

 experienced a greater failure of crops than any 

 other state. In Virginia, this gradual decline has 

 not injudiciously been ascribed to the culture of 

 tobacco and maize; the first it has been observed, 

 enriched the planter, but ruined the soil; the last 

 ruined both; but the culture of tobacco and maize, 

 as the staple articles of" the country, has only been 

 partial, being confined to some of the southern 

 states, while the decline has pervaded the whole 

 of them; therefore, however injurious these may 

 have been, we must look deeper for the root of the 

 mischief: that I venture to state, as likely to be 

 found in the present constitutions of the states, and 

 the manners of the people. 



Before the revolution, I have reason to believe 

 that the average produce of the soil would have 

 stood considerably higher than at present, and 

 there is no doubt that the owners of it were more 

 opulent: at that time, the capital of the country 

 was vested in the lands; and the landed proprie- 

 tors held the first rank in the country for opulence 

 and for information, and in general Reived, the 

 best education which America, and not unfre- 



quently Europe, could afford them: thtir estates 

 were sufficiently extensive to make it worth their 

 while to bestow their time and their money upon 

 them; and the estates in return repaid with inter- 

 est the attention and expense. The law of Eng- 

 land* generally prevailed with respect to the de- 

 scent of property; an aristocracy Avas formed of 

 capitalists, well calculated for improving, cultiva- 

 ting, ornamenting, and enriching the country; great 

 exertions and great improvements cannot be made 

 in any country but by persons of this description; and 

 no country requires such exertions and such im- 

 provements, as a new one. Since the revolution, a 

 new orderof things has taken place; new people, and 

 people of very different occupations and pursuits, 

 have taken the lead in the government, both of the 

 confederation and respective states. The capital, as 

 well as the government of the country, has slipped 

 out of the hands of landowners; and these new peo- 

 ple are now employed in very different, and, in 

 the present state of things, more productive spec- 

 ulations than the cultivation of lands; in specula- 

 tions frequently at variance with the best interests 

 of the country. In some of the states, the gentle- 

 men of landed property have passed into perfect 

 oblivion; in none of the stales do they bear the 

 sway, or even possess their due share of influence, 

 except perhaps in those, of New England; and 

 there, they only take it incidentally, as the lands 

 are divided with much equality among every de- 

 scription of people, and are rather a secondary ob- 

 ject, even with the principal people of the country, 

 who generally, with a small occupancy of land, 

 are obliged to follow other more lucrative pursuits, 

 on which they place their chief dependence. 



Before the revolution, real estates descended to 

 the eldest son; the law, since that period, has or- 

 dained an equal division of them among males and 

 females in equal degree, except in one or two states, 

 where the eldest son takes two shares. This law 

 has already had a very extensive, but a very mis- 

 chievous influence; it has had the effect which the 

 authors of it intended, in introducing a greater 

 equality among the people; but it has had another 

 also, which they might not have foreseen, and 

 could not have intended; that of reducing them to 

 an equality of poverty, and their soil almost to a 

 Caput mortuum. Fewer people of landed proper- 

 ty of any considerable opulence, are to be met 

 with, than heretofore, and their numbers must be 

 continually diminishing, from the influence of this 

 law of descent; for though some people will not 

 from custom acquiesce in it, and the wisest, from 



* In the state of Connecticut real estates were al- 

 ways divided, as at present, among the children, male 

 and female, the eldest son taking two shares; the evils, 

 however, of minute division of real property, are there 

 fully perceived and felt at this time. 



