38 LOW PROFITS OF TIDE- WATER DISTRICT. 



tivation as is substituted by the newly cleared. Sound calculations 

 of profit and loss would induce us even greatly to reduce the extent 

 of our present cultivation, in lower Virginia, by turning out and 

 leaving waste (if not to be improved), every acre that yields less 

 than the total cost of its tillage.* 



No political truth is better established than that the population 

 of every country will increase, or diminish, according to its regular 

 supply of food. We know from the census of 1830, compared with 

 those of 1820 and 1810, that our population is nearly stationary, 

 and, in some counties, is actually lessening; and therefore it is 

 certain that [to 1830] our agriculture in general is not increasing 

 the amount of food, or the means of purchasing food with all the 

 assistance of the new land annually brought under culture. In 

 these circumstances, a surplus population, with all its deplorable 

 consequences, is only prevented by the great current of emigration 

 which is continually flowing westward. No matter who- emigrates, 

 or with what motive the enterprising or wealthy citizen who 

 leaves us to seek richer lands and greater profits, and the slave sold 

 and carried away on account of his owner's poverty all concur in 

 producing the same result, though with very different degrees of 

 benefit to those who remain. If this great and continued drain 

 from our population was stopped, and our agriculture was not im- 

 proved, want and misery would work to produce the same results. 

 Births would diminish, and deaths would increase ; and hunger and 

 disease, operating here as in other countries, would keep down 

 population to that number that the average products of our agri- 

 cultural and other productive labour can feed, and supply with the 

 other necessary means for living. 



A stranger to our situation and habits might well oppose to my 

 statements the very reasonable objection, that no man would, or 

 could, long pursue a system of cultivation of which the returns fell 

 short of his expenses, including rent of land, hire of labour, interest 

 on the necessary capital, &c. Very true ; if he had to pay those 

 expenses out of his profits, he would soon be driven from his farm 

 to a jail. But we own our land, our labourers, and stock; and 

 though the calculation of nett profit, or of loss, is precisely the same, 

 yet we are not ruined by making only two per cent, on our capital, 



[* The foregoing description was written in 1826, and first published in 

 1831, and particular exceptions to the general correctness of the applica- 

 tion had been even then recently exhibited ; and, with the passage of every 

 year since, these exceptions have been becoming more numerous and more 

 important, and in a rapidly increasing ratio. These recent facts of im- 

 proved lands and increased production, as well as their peculiar causes, 

 will be treated of subsequently. The observations and deductions presented 

 in the remainder of this chapter were also of the same date as the forego - 

 ing statements, on which they are founded. (1842.) ] 



