254 [Assembly 



confine Americans to any one portion of the earth for the sake of 

 improving it, and we must wait for a rise in the value of land to 

 remedy an evil which, if it exists at all, is confined to very 

 limited portions of the State, and is caused by the abundant sup- 

 ply of new land. 



Solon Robinson — I rise to controvert a few of the monstrous 

 propositions of the last speaker — that the American farmer must 

 raise grain to feed European paupers, by which his soil must be 

 wasted, while he must sit down and see it run away, because he 

 cannot afford to buy manures to keep it in good condition. He 

 tells us that wealth is surplus produce, which a farmer may send 

 abroad, and yet only a minute before he told that his neighbors 

 last spring had a surplus of potatoes which they could not sell 

 for ten cents a bushel, because they could not ship them to England. 

 If there had been a manufacturing village in their midst there 

 would have been no surplus, no potatoes selling for ten cents. 

 He said, "If a man is so unfortunate as to be a farmer" — Yes, it 

 is unfortunate to be such a farmer as only lives to feed European 

 paupers, or raise potatoes that he cannot sell at ten cents a bushel, 

 or a farmer that cannot atford to buy manure. There is n^ far- 

 mer that cannot double his money if judiciously expended in 

 some concentrated fertilizer for his exhausted soil, uhether it is 

 lime, plaster, phosphate, guano, potash, nitrate of soda or com- 

 mon Salt, whichever his land wants. I will not allow this abom- 

 inable doctrine to go out uncontradicted as the sentiment of this 

 club, that a man must sit down contented to see his land go to 

 waste, by the natural course of events which must follow the free 

 trade doctrine. 



As to these census report figures proving anything but that the 

 whole thing is a lie, they do not. Who believes that the sheep 

 of this State decreased 25 per cent in five years 7 What became 

 of them? Did we eat them up? We did eat 13,000 last week, 

 but that would not reduce the number at the rate of 25 per cent, 

 and if it did, who believes that the product of wool increased. If 

 that is a fact, let us reduce the number another quarter, or else 

 do like the Irishman who was recommended to buy a stove to 

 save half the fuel, buy two and save the whole. 



