THE FARMERS' CABINET, 



AMERICAN HERD-BOOK, 



DEVOTED TO 

 AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, AND RURAL AND DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 



" The Productions of the Earth will always be in proportion to tiie culture bestowed upon it." 



Vol. VI.— No. 5.] 



12th mo. (December,) 15th, 1841. 



[Whole No. 83. 



KIMBER & SHARPL.ESS, 



PROPRIETORS AND PUBLISHERS, 



No. 50 North Fourth Street, 



PHILADELPHIA. 

 Price one dollar per year. — For coiKlitions see last page. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 American Farming. 



Mr. Editor, — The present sunshine and 

 very pleasant season of leisure remind me of 

 the promise which I partially made in my 

 last, to take up the subject on the compara- 

 tive difference between the pursuit of aorri- 

 culture in this country and Entjland. To do 

 this, a person should have had experience in 

 that line of life in the old country as well as 

 a knowledge of the modes and customs in 

 this, and the climates of both ; and with these 

 the writer believes he is tolerably conversant. 



It is g-enerally acknowledgred that the dif- 

 ference in the price of labour between the 

 two countries is the only drawback with which 

 the farmer in this, has to contend. Now, in 

 England, it is customary to calculate the value 

 of things in the farming business by the sum 

 paid for rent; thus, if a farm is well-situated 

 and very near an excellent market, these ad- 

 vantages are said to be worth half a rent 

 extra; and if it be well-watered, healthy, 

 with a dry and early soil, in a good neigh- 

 bourhood, well-fenced, with good dwellings 

 and extensive homestall, it is put down as 

 worth half a rent more, or double the value 

 of the same quantity of land ill-situated and 

 badly-circumstanced ; and I know of no bet- 

 ter mode of esiimating the advantages to be 

 lerived from peculiar circumstances in this 

 Jountry. Well then, at what shall we fix the 

 lifference between the value of farm-labour 

 n this country over that of England 1 shall 

 ve put it at once to three rents'? Then all 

 hat we have to do is to show that the advan- 

 ages peculiar to this country are equal to 

 hree times the rent paid in England, and 

 hen we start fair. 



In the first place, rents in this country are 

 lOt, on an average, one-half so high as they 

 re in England — here is one rent. 2d, The 

 irwardness of the seasons, by which the 

 irmer is enabled to secure his crops, both 

 ay and grain, so early as July, during long 



Cab.— Vol. VI.— No. 5. 



days and fine weather, often performing the 

 labour of two days in one, with the advan- 

 tage of immediately recropping his land on 

 the removal of his first crops for the use of 

 himself and his out-door stock in the coming 

 winter, with a moral certainty of obtaining a 

 season of sufficient length to bring them to 

 full maturity, and after that to enjoy sufficient 

 space to winter-fallow every acre of unem- 

 ployed land during the fine weather of au- 

 tumn — all this is cheap at another rent. 3d, 

 Then the freedom from tythe, which although 

 it is said to amount to a tenth only of the pro- 

 duce, might be safely put down at a fifth, for 

 the clergy bear no part of the extra expense, 

 labour of draining, fencing, manuring, clear- 

 in<j, or extra fallowing and improving, nor, 

 although they carry off" a tenth of the crop, 

 do they ever return one-tenth of the seed 

 with which to resow the land for the next 

 year's crop, but take their share after it has 

 been cut, bound, and made fit to carry at the 

 expense of the farmer — thus carrying away a 

 tenth of the farmer's labour as well as a tenth 

 of the produce. And if to tythes we add 

 church rates, Easter offerings, Christmas 

 dues — all these, with other taxes and rates 

 and duties which fall due every day of a 

 man's life, in the shape of taxes upon houses, 

 windows, horses, carriages, servants, roads, 

 and taxes upon these taxes — all this is far too 

 cheap at another rent. And after this come 

 the indirect taxes, commencing with tea at 

 98 per cent, on the value, and tobacco and 

 snufl^ at GOO per cent. ; " with," as a writer 

 observes, " taxes upon every article which 

 enters into the mouth or covers the back or 

 is placed under the foot, upon everything 

 which is pleasant lo see, hear, feel, smell, 

 taste — upon warmth, light and locomotion, 

 upon everything which comes from abroad or 

 is grown at home, on the raw material and 

 on every fresh value that is added to it by the 

 industry of man — on the sauce which pam- 

 pers a man's appetite and the drug which re- 

 stores him to health — on the ermine which 

 decorates the robe of the judge and the rope 

 which hangs the criminal! — on the brass 

 nails of the coffin and the ribbons of the 

 bride; while the school-boy whips his taxed 

 top and the beardless youth manages his tax- 

 ed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road, 

 the dying Englishman, pouring his medicines 



