454 SHEEP INDUSTRY OP THE UNITED STATES 



taining " internal good principles, but both liable to jjractical destruc- 

 tion." The keynote of his argument was opposition to banks, manu- 

 facturers, and a privileged class of officeholders. " The device of pro- 

 tecting duties, under the pretext of encouraging manufactures, oper- 

 ates, like its kindred, by creating a capitalist interest, which instantly 

 seizes upon the bounty taken by law from agriculture, and instead of 

 doing any good to the actual workers in wool, metal, cotton, or other 

 substances, it helps to rear up an aristocratical order at the expense 

 of workers in earth, to unite with government in oppressing every 

 species of useful industry." Twelve essays were devoted to the polit- 

 ical aspects of the subject, in which he attributed the decay of Virginia 

 agriculture and the depopulation of her small towns to the evils of gov- 

 ernment and the partiality shown banking and manufactures. In his 

 forty-fourth essay he takes up the sheep, and says : 



It is with reluctance that I am about to express my opinion as to tlnis stock, 

 lest they may discredit those upon which I have had more experience. For sixteen 

 years I have labored to estimate their value and character, upon a small scale, hav- 

 ing a flock only of from one to four hundred, daily attended by a shepherd, and my 

 conclusions are that they require and consume far more food, in proportion to their 

 size, than any other stock; that they are more liable to disease and death, and they 

 can not be made a profitable object, throughout the whole extent of the warm, dry 

 climate and sandy soil of the United States, but by banishing tillage from vast tracts 

 of country. These opinions are by no means intended, however, to exclude them as 

 a luxury for the table, capable of being made to repay a considerable portion of the 

 expense it causes. It is probable that the hot constitution of sheep produces a rapid 

 digestion and that insatiable appetite, by which the fact is accounted for of their 

 flourishing only to any extent in fine meadows or extensive wildernesses. If this vora- 

 ciousness is not gratified the animal perishes or dwindles ; if it is, he depopulates 

 the country he inhabits. The sheep of Spain have probably kept out of existence 

 or sent out of it more people than the wild beasts of the earth have destroyed from 

 the creation, and those of England may have caused a greater depopulation than 

 all her extravagant wars. It may be owing to this animal that the independence of 

 one country is almost overthrown, and of the other tottering. In both countries the 

 sufficiency of bread for sheep may have produced the insufficiency of bread for man, 

 and prejudice may have nurtured errors, of which our folly may relieve them, just as 

 superstition has been known to seize or steal an idol which had long been a curse 

 to the place of its invention. It is admitted that the wool of sheep is to a certain 

 extent a necessary and often a luxury; but if I fancied a pearl, why should I dive 

 for it myself, when those who love the employment wish to supply me ; or why should 

 a nation depopulate itself to gain them if it can become strong and populous with- 

 out pearls ? The earth's capacity to produce food and materials for clothes is lim- 

 ited, and by endowing the brute creation with so much of the former as to produce 

 a deficit for man's use in order to obtain a surplus of the latter for exportation, the 

 sheep policy is said to be perfected. It is probable that an acre of the proper soil 

 in the proper climate is capable of raising ten times as much cotton wool as sheep's, 

 and if we shall only glance at the vast quantity of the former material for clothing 

 exported from a small district of country thinly peopled we fehall at once see the 

 capacity of the earth to produce it to any needful extent without paying depopula- 

 tion for raiment. Although sheep's wool was the best resource for a state of igno- 

 rance it is superseded to a great extent by a state of cotton manufacturing skill, 

 and whilst the English nation have proved the high value of our cotton and opened 

 an inexhaustible demand for the abundance we can spare, it is certainly a responsi- 



