342 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



of New-England seem to manage themselves. It cannot be that Virginia lan- 

 guishes under the weight of hanks and corporations, for which she has a cordial 

 antipathy from her palmiest days to the present. ]New-England, so thriving, 

 so out of debt, so prosperous, has, we are told, "no great men nor any little 

 men ;" they seem to be all alike, as bullets from the same mould, and all slioot- 

 ing ahead. As for corporations, of banks and railroads, no country can equal her. 

 Her banks are at once the most numerous and the safest in the world ; their 

 stock is most widely diffused ; so are their loans. It is there as easy to make a 

 bank, if men have the money, as to make up a sweepstake in the South. The 

 people have the sagacity to facilitate the views of those who have capital to 

 lend ; if a man have a ten-dollar note he can buy slock with it wilhin the smoke 

 of his chimney, and put it at interest ; and wilhin the same distance any industri- 

 ous man can borrow money to give activity to his genius and his industry. There 

 is not a farm that has not within a very short distance non-producing consumers 

 of agricultural produce ready to buy the smallest thing that can be made on it 

 for sale. A man may engage for certaii'Pa purchaser for the butter yet in his 

 cow's udder, and the eggs that he knows his hens will lay in the morning. It 

 cannot be that Virginia languishes because she avoided speculation in railroads 

 and manufactories, for these thrifty Yankees have made more railroads than any 

 other people in the world ; and as for manufacturers, besides supplying enough 

 of them to consume every peck of apples and every string of onions that can be 

 made in the State, so that no capital need be lying dead in an acre of waste land, 

 they send the produce of their manufactories to the British Possessions, and pay 

 dutv, and undersell the old Mother, lohile she fays none. What is it, then, say, 

 ye friends in Virginia ? Will you penetrate the secret, and let us know ? Is there 

 some radical difference in the domestic policy of the two States, or something 

 partial, and pernicious to the interests of Virginia, in the action of the common 

 parent Government ? Pray think it over; it behooves you to find it out. Is it 

 that you arc all producers, and no consumers, tliink ye? That a vast proportion 

 of the products of your labor is consumed in the wear and tear and cost of ex- 

 changing it for what you get in return ? Don't you want to have the lap-stone, 

 and the loom, and the iron-miner, and the coal-heaver, to come and sit down 

 along side of you, as recommended by Mr. Jefferson ? Shall we look for a solu- 

 tion in Professor Tucker's Tables of the relative numbers employed in Agricul- 

 ture and in Manufactures in the New-England States, where all are thriving, all 

 out of debt, and in the Southern States, where an immense proportion of every 

 man's estate lies so much dead capital in waste land, from which his children 

 are running away. Let us look at these proportions, and let every man draw 

 his own conclusion. Here, then, is the exhibit : in 1810 the proportion employed 

 in the New-England States was, out of 100, in Agriculture 72'8 ; Commerce 

 6'2 ; Manufactures 21. In 1840, twenty years afterward, the proportion em- 

 ployed in Agriculture had diminished from 72-8 to 66-7, while those em- 

 ployed in Manufactures had increased from 21 to 30'2. In that year, 1840, 

 in the six New-England States, for every 66 persons employed in Agricul- 

 ture, there were, close alongside of them, thirty manufacturers, ready to con- 

 sume whatever they had to sell — a pint of raspberries or a pound of butter — a 

 gallon of milk or a gallon of cherries — and ready at the same time to buy their 

 wool and to supply them with coats— to buy their raw hides and supply them 

 with shoes. Here 's one, and there 's the other ! No time lost in exchanges. 

 The New-England farmer spends all his time and keeps all his manure on his 



(662) 



