220 



Tenants on Shares. 



Vol. V. 



For Ihe Fanners' Cabinet. 

 Tenants on Shares. 



Mr. Editor, — In the Farmers' Register 

 for December, I find some excellent and perti- 

 nent remarks upon the systems of agriculture, 

 or rather the want of such, in the time of the 

 publication of a series of " Essays by Arator" 

 (John Taylor of Virginia), so long ago as the 

 year 1809, or 1810, which are, unfortunately, 

 about as much in season, at the present day, 

 as then, and pointing directly at the root of 

 the evil complained of; an evil, however, 

 which appears to be incurable — interwoven 

 with the existence of the country — a love 

 of change, and an impatience of control 

 being peculiarly characteristic of a nation 

 indebted for its liberty, and freedom from vas- 

 salage, to a restless spirit of enterprise, ma- 

 nifest to every foreigner on first stepping 

 foot amongst us, and an anxious speculation, 

 which pervades all ranks, unfitting men for 

 sitting down on the same spot for " twenty- 

 one years," coolly to study the improvement 

 of a soil in which he has only the right of 

 tenantry, after all. It would seem, that to 

 men who contemplate a removal to the west 

 " year after next," there can be but one rule 

 of action, namely, to get all they can from 

 the soil, and return to it as little as possible, 

 in the shape of expense and labour — a prin- 

 ciple this, sufficient to account, at once, for all 

 the sterility and bad management which we 

 witness, particularly in the southern states, 

 where the chief staples of produce yield no- 

 thing in return, as food for cattle, or the reno- 

 vation of the soil. 



The essay from which the following ex- 

 tracts are copied, is headed " Overseers," but 

 the observations apply, exactly, to that class 

 of men who take land on shares — a numer- 

 ous class, who enter upon their duties con- 

 fessedly as men of no capital, and whose only 

 object is to create one by screwing it out 

 of the soil, in which they have oftentimes 

 a yearly interest only, that they might be 

 enabled to " take land of their own ;" the 

 owners of the land becoming partners in the 

 iniquitous and suicidal connexion, and receiv- 

 ing one half the proceeds that have been 

 VvTung from the poverty-stricken soil ! — the 

 tenant, in the mean while, being valued in 

 proportion to the magnitude of the extortion 

 practised. 



A Constant Reader. 



" So far from having a system of agricul- 

 ture among us, very few have ever taken the 

 trouble to discover or provide one for us. 

 Had Archimedes proposed to move the earth 

 without any thing for him or his mechanism 

 to stand upon, or an architect to erect a city 

 without a foundation, such projects would 



have been equivalent to ours for erecting a 

 system of agriculture upon the basis of the' 

 improvement of the soil. Of what avail can 

 any rotation of crops — the best contrived im- 

 plements of husbandry, or the most perfect 

 use of those implements be, when applied to 

 a barren soil ■? Could a physician correctly 

 call the regular administration of a slow 

 poison a system of medicine, because he used 

 the best-constructed lancets, caudle-cups, and 

 syringes, in killing his patient ? It is absurd 

 to talk of a system of agriculture, without 

 having discovered that every such system, 

 good for any thing, must be bottomed on fer- 

 tility ; before, therefore, we launch into any 

 system, we must learn how to enrich our 

 lands. The soil of the United States, upon 

 the Atlantic Ocean, is naturally thin, and 

 exceedingly impoverished ; it produces, how- 

 ever, good crops, when made rich, almost 

 under any species of cultivation : to make it 

 rich, therefore, ought to be the first object 

 of our efforts, as, without effecting this, all 

 other agricultural objects, beneficial to our- 

 selves or our country, must fail. Instead of 

 this, for one acre enriched, at least twenty 

 are impoverished. 



The disposition of our soil and climate to 

 reward husbandry bountifully, is disclosed in 

 the great returns bestowed upon bad culture, 

 by the very moderate degree of natural fer- 

 tility possessed by the former (the soil). 

 Tlie climate is beyond our power, but the 

 productiveness of the soil, without the help 

 of art, is an encouragement for us to recollect 

 how impiously we have neglected the culti- 

 vation of a deity so propitious : but this deity 

 has a rival demon, called ignorance, for whose 

 worship the slave states have erected an es- 

 tablished church, with a ministry, entitled 

 overseers, who are fed, clothed and paid to 

 suppress every effort for introducing the wor- 

 ship of its divine adversary. This necessary 

 class of men arc bribed by agriculturists not 

 to improve, but to impoverish their land, by 

 giving them a share of the crop for one year ; 

 an ingenious contrivance for placing the 

 lands in these states under an annual rack- 

 rent, and a removing tenant. The farm, 

 from several gradations to an unlimited ex- 

 tent, is surrendered to the transient overseer, 

 whose salary is increased in proportion as he 

 can impoverish the land. The greatest an- 

 nual crop, and not the most judicious culture, 

 advances his interest and establishes his cha- 

 racter ; and the fees of these land-doctors are 

 much higher for killing than for curing! It 

 is customary for an industrious overseer, after 

 a few years, to quit a farm on account of its 

 barrenness, occasioned by his own industry ; 

 and frequent changes of these itinerant ma- 

 nagers of agriculture, each striving to extract 

 the remnant of fertility left by his predeces- 



