THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



63 



In some fields they operate as badly as bavren- 

 iie6s itself, because they root out every thing use- 

 ful. To extirpate weeds, great care, perseverance 

 and continued labor are indispensable ; and I 

 have come to the conclusion that in the judicious 

 destruction of weeds before they seed even after 

 the usual time of hoeing and pulling them up, 

 labor may be well expended. Collected together 



and carried to the places where manure is made, 

 they form a most excellent material as well in 

 nbi^orbing the liquids whose strength without such 

 connection passes away in the air in volatile ptir- 

 ticles, as in the component substance of the ma- 

 nine itself. 



WANT OF SOIL MADE UP BY GREATER INDUSTRY. 



The njountains in China, that are not bare 

 ledges or otherwise barren beyond reparation, are 

 all cultivated. So fearful are they of losing an 

 inch of ground, that they suffer no liedges or 

 ditches or scarce a single tree to remain above 

 the surface. Their drains arc all covered. It is 

 said to be in that country very agreeable to be- 

 hold in some places plains three or four leagues 

 in length, surrounded with hills and mountains, 

 cut from bottom to top into terraces three or four 

 feet high and rising one above another sometimes 

 to the tiuraber of twenty or thirty. Still more are 

 they industrious and persevering. Among the 

 barren and uncultivated mountains there are 

 sometimes fertile spots : here the land is levelled 

 and divided into jjiots at different heights. As 

 the rice will not thrive without water, reservoirs 

 are constructed at proper distances and at differ- 

 ent heights, to catch the rain as it falls or the 

 water descending from the mountain ; and this is 

 afterwards distributed among the rice plots. 



To this surprising industry of the Chinese 

 husbandmen is it due that immense quantities of 

 grain and herbs are produced in that country. 

 So numerous are the inhabitants that all that is 

 raised hardly suffices to support them. To live 

 comfortably they want a country twice as large. 



THE POOR OPPRESSED in THE BEST AGRICULTU- 

 RAL COUNTRIES. 



Ill that coimtiy as in most all others where age 

 and the concentration of wealth produces artifi- 

 cial distinctions, the mouth of labor is robbed of 

 a portion of its earnings: there ai-e castes of rich 

 and poor. The practice is that the landlord and 

 owner of the soil has half of the products : the 

 other is retained by the husbandman for his own 

 use. 



In Great Britain the case of the mere laborer 

 is still worse than in China ; for there instead of 

 being removed one degree below- the landlord, he 

 is but as the slave of the tenant himself; and both 

 the interests of the landlord and tenant are com- 

 bined to reduce the compensation of those who 

 do the work to the lowest point of endurance. 

 The British corn laws, which exclude the impor- 

 tation of bread stuffs while the price remains be 

 low a certain point — a price that no man of com- 

 mon revenue can pay — and which only admit 

 them at the increased price on the payment of 

 an enormous duty — are intended only for the pro- 

 tect ion of the landlord and tenant with no regard 

 to the poor drudges in the field whose labor is 

 generally more severe, whose condition is more 

 dependent, and whose treatment is more cruel, 

 than those of the colored slaves upon most of the 

 American plantations. 



BRUTES TREATED BETTER THAN MEN AND WO- 

 MEN. 



A more generous trade with foreign nations 

 would cheapen the price of agricultural pro- 

 ducts for the benefit of the laboring classes. In 

 the midst of the most fruitful fields, in the midst 

 of full granaries, the British peasant is not allow- 

 ed bread for his family. Surrounded by the fat- 

 test flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, he has 

 no means of purchasing meat for one daily meal. 

 These are all disposed of for the benefit of ihe 

 landlord and tenant ; and so great is the weight 

 of taxation that the merest refuse of the frag- 

 ments is reserved for those wlio perform the la- 

 bor and drudgery. Policy, if not humanity, im- 

 pels the British yeoman to treat well and feed 

 high the brutes that are either employed in culti- 

 vating the land or are intended for slaughter. 

 The same policy also teaches him to treat and 

 feed well the ground which yields its annual in- 

 crease and returns profits far exceeding the out- 

 lay. Hut it is to be Inmetiled that tli'- same poll 



cy extends not to the dependent part of humanity 

 which performs the labor. 



"muzzle not THE OX THAT TREADETII OCT 

 THE CORN." 



Ireland, whenever there is a short crop or rais- 

 , price in this country, is ready to transport to 

 full cargoes of wheat and other grains, and to 

 supply us with supeiior butter and cheese. The 

 poor peasant whose hard work produced these 

 articles is rarely suffered to taste of any of them. 

 I have at this time in my employ a faithful Irish- 

 man whose services to me are invaluable, who 

 pends not, but lays up nearly every cent of his 

 earnings. He was brought up by his own father 

 who was a tenant farmer of some thirty-six acres 

 of land, from which the latter had obtained suffi- 

 cient not only to pay a high rent to his landlord, 

 but to save something for himself. The father, 

 like other tenants, performed little labor himself: 

 he had been instructed to read and write, and 

 was qualified to keep accounts. Not so the son 

 whose destiny was intended to be that of a mere 

 laborer. No pains were taken for his instruction : 

 no expense was laid out upon him even to qualify 

 him for the business of life pursued by his parent. 

 He was made an exception to tho brothers and 

 sisters of his own family, because it was conve- 

 nient to make his calling more humble and more 

 servile than theirs. 



This family, according to the re|)resentation of 

 the honest Irishman, may be taken as a sample 

 of the agriculturists in the counties lying at no 

 very great distance from Dublin. The thirty-six 

 acres which makes up the farm, is hired upon a 

 long lease from its wealthy proprietor who in 

 herits a large hereditary property. The value of 

 the improvements made upon it at the expense of 

 the tenant are greater than the original value of 

 the land itself. This laud by artificial means 

 made to yield a greater amount of produce th 

 some farms in this country of ten times the acres. 

 The butter and the cheese andgrain, the increase 

 of the cows and horses, are all sold either to pay 

 rent, or to lay up something for other invest 

 ments. In a farm of this size very Uttle is paid 

 out for wages : children and females who work 

 for very small pay are almost exclusively employ- 

 ed. The luxury of butter and cheese and meat 

 or even of bread, is seldom indulged in by the 

 better part of the family. Potatoes and water 

 porridge seasoned with oatmeal, and such of the 

 products of the land as will not yield ready mon- 

 ey, constitute the daily sustenance of the family, 

 Among the better class of peasantry in Ireland, 

 the daily use of tea is not known ; and it is only 

 on some extraordinary thanksgiving occasion 

 when relatives from a distance make their long 

 expected visit that this beverage is used : coffee 

 is an article with them which is never used. 



NT. 



A NOBLE AND A TRUE 



It was a saying of the celebrated Farmer of 

 Virginia, John Taylor of Caroline, that " the more 

 industry spends of its own earnings, and the less 

 of them is intercepted by governments, or taken 

 away by legal projects, the greater and the haii- 



■ wifl he the nation." The condition of our 

 own iiee country, when compared with that of 

 most other countries, is truly enviable in this re- 

 spect. Contrasted with the wretchedness of the 

 peasantry in England, Scotland or Ireland, our 

 own laborers enjoy a condition of life incompara- 

 bly more eligible. There every thing from the 

 hand of labor that can be taken hold of for the 

 purposes of government, is intercepted. There 

 every thing is taxed for the support of expensive 

 governments and for the debts which expensive 

 governments have created. There taxation runs 

 so wild that many things intended for the daily 

 use of man are i)laced beyond his reach. There 

 taxation has reduced labor down to the jnice 

 which verges on the very line of pauperism, and 

 makes the individual a public charge the moment 

 sickness or want of employment deprives him of 

 the ability to labor. In this country the earnings 

 of industry mainly go for its own benefit ; and 

 here, as yet, the burdens of taxation are so light 

 that although the price of labor is twice or thrice 

 as high as it is in most nations of Europe, still 

 production costs not more than the added differ- 

 ence of taxation between ouis and the foreign 



country. 



GOVERNMENTS SHOULD BE CONFINED TO 

 MAIN OBJECTS. 



the purposes of the government to as few objects 

 as possible — to create as little expense in the ad- 

 ministration as may be consistent with those ob- 

 jects — to confine legislation, both State and Na- 

 tional, to its legitimate sphere — to tax no one 

 interest for the especial protection and advantage 

 of any other interest — to leave trade and com- 

 merce as free to enterprise as the rules of a just 

 reciprocity will admit — and to impose no unne- 

 cessary burdens on trades and occupations. 



Enviable as is our position in relation to public 

 burdens when compared with those nations of 

 the old world whose mad ambition has led them 

 into expenses sufficient to swallow up the entire 

 surplus of industry, we have as a nation many 

 sins to repent of, and much of our practice and 

 policy requires amendment. The extravagance 

 of the age pervades this country hardly less than 

 it does older countries; Indeed our onwai-d march 

 and enterprise drive us often into more sudden 

 excesses than we have been wont to read of or 

 realize in history ; and if experience shall not be 

 to us a salutary teacher, we never can expect to 

 profit by any instruction from positive evil. 



THE TENDENCY OF GOVERNMENTS TO EXCESS. 



Why is it, that not only in the national govern- 

 ment, but in those of most of the States of the 

 Union, and not only in these but in the adminis- 

 tration of most of our county, city aiid town mu- 

 nicipalities, we meet with a continually increased 

 expense .' There is no lack of men to fill oflaces 

 of trust and responsibility for the present com- 

 pensation ; yet how few are satisfied with the pay 

 and emoluments whenever there is a prospect of 

 enlarging them ? The desire to create new sour- 

 ces of expenditure is no less irrepressible than 

 that of enlarging those \vhich already exist. Sel- 

 dom do we see successful attempts to make the 

 expenses of government less : the objects to be 

 reached by the action of government become 

 more and more numerous ; enterprises, some- 

 times of doubtful utility, are undertaken with in- 

 creasing avidity ; and "the nation, state, county, 

 town or other municipality, finds itself when too 

 late to retrace its steps involved in burdens and 

 responsibilities with but too general assent, such ' 

 as no prudent individual would voluntarily incur. 



INCREASING EXTRAVAGANCE. 



We need only look to the history of some of 

 the States for the last fi:w years for evidence that 

 the present generation has run wild, and that re- 

 form is indispensable to tho welfare of the coun- 

 try. As with communities so it has been with 

 individuals— all have gone astray from that sim- 

 plicity and that frugality which characterized our 

 fathers. Extravagance has insidiously wormed 

 itself into our practices and our habits. The man 

 of business at New York, Philadelphia and Bos- 

 ton, lives at the rate of ten to twenty thousand a 

 year ; and the man of business in the country 

 now expends his thousands where men of the 



business twenty years ago spent only their 

 hundreds. We buy now without hesitation what 

 our fathers and our mothers either did without or 

 made for themselves. We pay the government a 

 duty of five dollars on a coat besides the cost in 

 a foreign country and the merchant's profits,which 

 was supplied forty and fifty years ago from wool 

 of our fiithers' flocks, spun and wove by our 

 mothers' or sisters' hands, dressed by the clothier 

 of our own neighborhood, and made up under 

 our own roof. One garment of this plain manu- 

 facture would then supply the place and length 

 of time of at least four fashionable garments of 

 the present day. 



Extravagance ends not with the dress of males 

 and females of the present generation. Hun- 

 dreds and thousands of our females adorn their 

 persons ; and it is admitted by those of us who 

 are swayed by the fashions of the times that they 

 do often adorn and make beauty more beautiful. 

 But if the simplicity of nature were more fa.sh- 

 ionable— if beauty unadorned were most the ob- 

 ject of admiration— we should witness a return to 

 the times when dissimulation was not considered 

 an indispensable virtne-^when the morals and the 

 manners of the present would not suflTer in coin- 

 ison w itli those of a former generation. 



HIS FARM AND FARM LA- 



pari; 



GEORGE WASHINGTON : 



It shoidd be the object of the people 



Among tho men of this country who have beei' 

 distinguished patrons of Agriculture and whos<n 

 example has exerted a salutary influence through 



p oni the IT.iited SiMtes, Gfobge Washing 



