PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 133 



50,000 acres of land. Figure it as you will you cannot make it less. As 

 a nation we are living the life of a spendthrift; while he cuts out of his 

 capital — we out of out virgin soil. 



"Farms in manufacturing districts are more profitable than in grain 

 growing ones, and they continually grow more fertile. On a vast number 

 of acres in New England, more grain can be raised now than was possible 

 fifty 3'ears ago. It is a fact, then, that with our reapers and other 

 improvements, even with the increase of our enterprise, and of our know- 

 ledge of farming, we are rapidly as possible turning our farms into deserts. 

 At the present rate of shipments of food, in less than three centuries 

 neither corn nor wheat will sprout, and the soil of England will be forty 

 feet deep. 



"It is not every one who sees the providences of this war. 



" ' He sees a hand you cannot see, 

 He hears a voice you cannot hear.' 



" One providence works through Bull Run defeats and through ill dis- 

 guised disasters, to force on all classes the conviction that we cannot 

 succeed until we are determined to be just. 'By this sign shall we 

 conquer.' 



" During these days England is struggling, by means of her capitalists, 

 to lay the foundations of a lasting prosperity. Her plan, her salvation, is 

 to get the control of our finances, to break up our manufactories, then to 

 do our manufacturing, and to have us feed her people. She will fail. For, 

 though we groan over the prospect of a great debt, it will providentially 

 lead us to prosperity and England to ruin. To avoid high duties, which 

 are as certain as death, we will be obliged to raise our wool and flax, our 

 silks and our satins, our fruits and our wines, our laces and ribbons. 

 Then, no longer, 0, England, will ^'our forges blaze and your looms rattle 

 for the American farmer. Across his fields he will see tall chimneys,- and 

 he will be awakened at morning by the factory bell." 



Van Dieman's Land Onion. 



Mr. W. R. Prince. — A very fine onion is brought from Yan Dieman's 

 Land, via California. It is oval in shape, and sold, when I was there, at 

 one dollar and a quarter per pound. 



Great Analogy between the Vegetable Productions of China, 

 Japan and North America, and the Great Normal Causes 

 of this Similitude. 



Mr. Wm. R. Prince. — There has long existed among us a prejudicial 

 fashion of continually looking to Europe for new and improved products of 

 the vegetable kingdom, although in many respects we are already far in 

 advance of that continent, which has now become indebted to us for their 

 most valuable implements of agriculture. How much more rational would 

 it be, so far as natural productions are concerned, to look "to China and 

 Japan, the former of which awakened such amazement by its vast develop- 

 ment of agricultural and horticultural pursuits in the embassy of Lord 

 Macartney, when he first visited that country in 17925 and the latter of 



