APPENDIX. 



181 



NOTE. 



No person, who has looked over the statistical returns of the manufactur- 

 ing and mechanical industry of the state, compiled the last year by the intel- 

 ligent and industrious Secretary of the Commonwealth, can have failed to 

 be astonished at their great amount. The result of inquiries into the pro- 

 ducts of agriculture, would, it is believed, produce equal surprise at their 

 large aggregate. We can scarcely be said to have made a beginning in taxing 

 the labor and skill of our husbandmen, and the capacities of our hard soil 

 Agriculture, with us, has been too much disdained ; and readier modes of 

 acquiring property have been greedily sought after, to the great prejudice of 

 the interests of agricultural labor. It is hoped a better day is dawning upon 

 us, and that the humbler but more substantial comforts of life, in the whole- 

 some rewards of rural industry and indejjendence, will be more justly esti- 

 mated. The returns, which I have been enabled to obtain, are necessarily 

 very imperfect. Many articles are entirely omitted, and the supplies for the 

 family, furnished by the farm a large part of the year, have not at all been 

 taken into the account. But enough is done, 1 hope, to convince the Gov- 

 ernment of the value of such returns, and to induce them to take effectuaj 

 and early measures to obtain such returns, from every town in the state, 

 with accuracy and fulness. Whatever serves to increase our estimate of 

 the productive capacities of our state, strengthens an attachment to our 

 native soil, abates envy and covetousness in respect to the advantages of 

 other climes and soils, and quiets or extinguishes the restless and infectious 

 spirit of emigration. H. C. 



