78 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



SEPT. e, 1840. 



AND HORTICULTURAL RKGISTER. 



Boston, Wedkesday, Sept. 9, 1840. 



THE LABORING CLASSES. 



The condilion ot" liu: liibf>ring classps in Kurope and 

 in this country is exciting strongly the a'tcntJon of the 

 reflecling and humane. It is noi our intention, certain- 

 ly at this time, Id go into the subject. Among the la- 

 boring classes are comfirehendeil many more than most 

 persons, nt first gliince, apprehend. The merchant at 

 his desk, is often one of the hardest of labiprers; and 

 Mr Dune, of Beverly, who compiled a most valuable di- 

 gest of the laws, valuable to every class in the commu- 

 nity, and spent regularly for moie than forty years, six- 

 teen hours a day in close application to this business, 

 certainly labored as intensely and severely as any man 

 that can be found among us. If we look at the hard stu- 

 dent, who in many cases by the offspring of his mind, 

 renders extensive, essential, and permanent aids to the 

 community, and to the laboring and mechanical com- 

 munity in particular, and see his pallid and wasted fea- 

 tures, and hear his complaints of indigestion, disturbing 

 dreams, fruitless efl'nrts and sleepless nights, we shall 

 be disposed to include liim among the hardest of labo- 

 rers. 



But the classes which are generally referred to in 

 speaking of the working classes, are iho^e who w(»rk 

 with their hands, with their muscles, with their bodies. 

 The sufferings of these classes are in many countries 

 extreme, and have just claims to all the conimisseration 

 which the humane can feel for them. In many coun- 

 tries they are poorly fed, or rather starved ; not half 

 clad, live in unliealthy, subterranean, wet, ill-ventilated 

 habitations; and are doomed to toil, which is almost in- 

 cessant, leaves no time for domestic comforts and scarce- 

 ly for sleep. Philanthropic minds look at these things 

 with exquisite pain, and are devising means to remedy 

 these terrible evils. They are shocked at the anomaly, 

 that those who produce the loaf must always he satisfied 

 with the under-crust, however buinl or haidbaked, and 

 not always gel the whole of that; and that the finest of 

 the flour and the whole of it gt^es into hands which are 

 not so much as soiled with milting the bread, after the 

 corn has been grown. 



We feel in many cases the extreme inju.'>tice of this; 

 but whc^re is the remedy .' There may be alleviations, 

 but there can be no perfect remedy until the whole con- 

 stitutiim of society is changed, and until human nature 

 is changed. Whoever thinks to ch.inge the constitu- 

 tion of society or to change human nature, may as well 

 think of levelling the Rocky mountains and of making 

 the .Mississippi flow into the Oreg(m. Some minds 

 with large hopo fancy they see day-light on this sub- 

 ject; but our hope is small, and though we have been 

 dreaming for some time about the good that is to come 

 to human nature presently, we do not think the night is 

 passed; we do not believe that evt-n midnight has yet 

 come. Our melancholy crmvictions are founded upon 

 two cimsiderations. First, Christianity among us, as a 

 law of universal justice and universal love, is a mere 

 name. We have scarcely yet learnt the first three let- 

 ters of the alphabet. Secondly, the disfiositiou and ten 

 dency to abuse power is the great sin of human nature. 

 Where is the man v\ ho can say that in this matter he is 

 blameless.' Now then as soon as you give men educa- 

 tion, property or political power, and, as we term it, 

 elevate them in the community, they feel the power; 

 they become antagonlstical to the class below them, on 

 whose labor they depend ; they cease to wish to bring 



them to an etjuality with themselves; they abuse their 

 power. In general the novelty of the possession of pow- 

 er renders these people liable to its grossest abuse. Man- 

 umitted slaves make ifie most cruel of all task-masters; 

 and men raisi'd from the lowest oppression to rank and 

 power, have always proved the most unrelenting and 

 despotic. Under these circumstances, what hope is 

 there for ignorance, weakness, poverty and mendicity 

 in its struggle against intelligence, selfishness, and po- 

 litical power ? Look, say you, to the justice and humani- 

 ty and magnanimity of society ? Yes ! look to these 

 wiih a witness, as you would lo.>k to the tiger to drop 

 the lamb, into which he hns just fleshed his teeth ; and 

 is now regaling on the sweetness of (he fresh blood. 



In our country, thank God ! we can hardly be said to 

 have such a class as we have described. In Great Brit- 

 ain no laboring man can ever expect to becr.me a free- 

 holder; nor to rise above the condition in which he and 

 his ancestors before him have trr.ddeu the beaten round 

 oftoil. In our country a nuin may become any thing 

 which he chooses to make himself. Ho may be a free- 

 holder ; and he and his children may aspire to the high- 

 est dignities of the State; and to the undisturbed pos- 

 session of the fruits of his honest industry. Cheap land 

 and of the highest fertility may be had almost for ask- 

 ing. F^very man is at liberty to choose his own profes- 

 sion and for hi.s children after him ; and industry and 

 frugality joined with moral integrity, are sure (extraor- 

 dinary contingencies excepted,) of competence and hon- 

 or. 



If the laboring classes — we speak particularly of the 

 male portion, for women are bound by customs and cir- 

 cumstances which pievent their commanding their con- 

 dition — forfeit their independence or fail to maintain it 

 in our country, it must be their own fault. The great 

 danger of ibis lies to aconsiderable extent, in the melan- 

 choly fact of their forsaking tlie pursuits and employ- 

 ments of agriculture and the wholesome equality and 

 manliness of rural life, to crowd into cities, to become 

 petty traders, ostlers, bar-keepers, porters, servants, 

 coachmen, fuoimen, and indeed any thing and every 

 thin", however servile, by which they can without too 

 much work acquire ready money. Of this numerous 

 class of young men, supplied as it is by the most costly 

 drafts Ujion the country, though as we well know, there 

 ate many honorable exceptions, ) et the great mass be- 

 come perfectly effeminate ; spend in dress and dissipa- 

 tion as much as they earn; fall a prey to the numerous 

 temptations of city life; or become abandoned to the 

 "ross vices of which they are frequently called to be 

 the ministers or panders for others. We have so little 

 hope of human nature, that we see no remedy for 

 this; and fear in spite of all the noble aspirations and 

 confident labors of philanthropy, the world will go on 

 as it is. H. C. 



DEATH OF DR HENRY PERRINE. 

 The papers recently announced an attack by the Flor- 

 ida Indians, in number one hundred, upon Key West, 

 and the cruel destruction of many of the inhabitants: 

 among the rest the valuable man whose name is at the 

 head of this article, lie was eminently distinguished 

 by his botanical researclies and his devotion to natuial 

 science His communications to the public press on 

 these subjects have been numerous and many of them 

 insiruclive and valuable. He had been employed by 

 the government in the cullivalion of valuable tropical 

 plants, with a view to their propagation in the Stales; 

 and his researches and experiments promised to be ot 

 much utility. It is but recently that we received a long 

 communication from him, written with all the enthusi- 

 asm of scientific pursuit. Bui a mournful Providence 

 has prematurely sealed his falo. 



This Indian warfare is horrible. The savages give 

 no qoarlcr. How upon any princi|iles of human nature 

 can it be expected to be otherwise.' We have robbed 

 and defrauded them. We hayecarrieil amonjr them the 

 two greatest of curses, the small pox and whisUey. — 

 Whole tribes, as Catlin says, have (alien at the contami- 

 nating tout h of the white man. We have undei taken 

 lo teach them what we call Christianity — a matter in 

 which we seem to be rather poorly instructed ourselves; 

 and the arts of civilization; and when they had made 

 some progress, then we coveted their green fields and 

 golden crops, and liave driven them, when the most 

 atrocious frauds failed us, at the point of the ba\onet 

 from their homes and the sejiulchres of their fathers. — 

 Now we are hunting them witli blood hounds ; and they 

 perceive that ihe hour of their utter extermination has 

 arrived. What have we not to expect from savages, in 

 the last gasp of their death struggle ! We have a friend 

 who crossed the country with a party of twenty persons, 

 from the mouth of the Missouri to the mouth of the Co- 

 lumbia river. He was six months among Ihe Indians, 

 without seeing a white man, save those of his own par- 

 ty. In this whole time he says his quiet was never me- 

 naced nor his life in danger but once, and this from a 

 tribe at war with those among whom he was. He found 

 nothing but kindness and fidelity. Our opinions of 

 human nature are not very exalted ; yet after all we be- 

 lieve that there is something in the heart of man, how- 

 ever tawny the skin, which always responds to gene- 

 rosity, kindness, honor and justice, where they have 

 not been outraged and violated ; and therefore we be- 

 lieve that for most of tlie Indian wars in which our coun- 

 try has been so often up to the elbows in blond, the guil 

 ty responsibility rests upon ourselves. 



These considerations, however, do not at all mitigate 

 the sadness of the cc.lamity which we now deplore, nor 

 lessen the duty of the government to afford adequate 

 protection to our frontiers. H. C. 



Farms in England. — Nine tenths of the cultivated 

 lands in Great Britain are leased to tenants, who pay 

 from two to five pounds sterling per acre, annual rent. 

 Now, admitting taxes and labor and other expenses to 

 bo no higher here than there, it will at once be seen that 

 our common cultivation will no where do much more 

 than pay the price of rent; but by superior productive- 

 ness, occasioned by superior cultivation, the British 

 farmer is not only enabled to pay rents and taxes, find- 

 ing every thing for husbandry, and all articles put upon 

 the ground, and all utensils by which the ground is 

 worked, but he obtains also, wealth from the pursuit of 

 his calling. Mr Cumin stated the produce of an Eng- 

 lish farm of894 acres in the year 1811, to be £8,578— 

 equal to $38,000. On this gn.und were carried in that 

 year, the almost incredible quantity of 13,746 one-horse 

 cartloads of manure, and in the next year 10,250 more ! 

 Suppose the rent of this farm to be $12 an acre, the ex- 

 pense of manure and its application 1^12 more, and the 

 interest on outlay, t.ixes, and additional labor ot culti- 

 vation, &c. $12 more; still there will bo left, as profit, 

 $10 an acre ; leaving a clear gain of about ten thousand 

 dollars lo the tenant. 



A hay farm, near London, of KiO acres, was rented 

 for $12 an acre, or 1020 dollars a year : the tenant com- 

 menced with a great outlay liir manure — an outlay which 

 would here be considered at least equal to the value of 

 the land before it was manured ; a large outlay for farm- 

 ing implements and for accommodations and wages for 

 laborers; and yet he has been constantly accumulating 

 riches from this farm, after paying all expenses. — Month- 

 ly Visitor. 



