SYSTEM AND ROTATION. 81 



the renovation of our already exhausted fields to retain and 

 improve the productive quality of our new lands, and to 

 secure at the same time the raising at home of sufficient pro- 

 visions with plantation teams, enabling us entirely within our- 

 selves to carry forward the prosperous production of our cot- 

 ton. In every other section of this country, north, east, and 

 west, the proceeds of the productive industry of the people 

 in the grand aggregate, are retained at home, while we, the 

 planters of the south, producing annually, from a single one 

 of our crops, $150,000,000 ! pay out the grand aggregate to 

 others for bread, bacon, and mules, all of which we may, un- 

 der a proper system of plantation economy grow at home, and 

 thus we may retain at home also this large sum of gold, the 

 substance of our fields, to be expended in home improve- 

 ments. 



It is an entirely fallacious political economy that supposes 

 for a moment, that we are to make so much cotton annually, 

 at the sacrifice of our personal and national interests ; and it 

 is as equally fallacious to argue, as many do, that it is our 

 true policy to buy bread, bacon, and mules of others though 

 we may be able to raise them that they may be induced to 

 buy our cotton. There are other arguments for this ruinous 

 policy too frivolous with which to detain you. 



Now I insist upon it boldly, that this whole barter policy is 

 totally at fault. It is one of dependence and slavishness. 

 With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the production 

 of cotton, our country is also equally favorable to the produc- 

 tion of all the necessary cereals, and as remarkably favorable 

 to the perfect development of the animal economy, in fine 

 horses, fine active mules, good milch cattle, superior sheep, 

 and fat hogs, and for fruit of every variety (not tropical) it is 

 eminently superior. If this condition of things be fact, and I 

 assert it to be such, why is it that we find so many wealthy 

 4* 



