392 AGBICULTOEE. 



this State, finding themselves losing a representative in the new 

 ratio, while Pennsylvania gains two, have, in alarm, actually deigned 

 to inquire into the growth of the agricultural class, with some little 

 attention. They have not generally arrived ai the truth, however, 

 which is, that Pennsylvania is, as a State, much better farmed than 

 New-York, and hence the agricultural population increases much 

 faster. ^ 



It is a painful truth, that both the press and the more active, 

 minds of the country at large are strikingly ignorant of the condition 

 of agriculture in all the older' States, and one no less painful, that the 

 fanners, who are not ignorant of it, are, as a body,, not intelligent 

 enough to know how to remedy the evil. 



"And what is that evU?" many of our readers will doubtiess 

 inquire. We answer, the miserable system of farming steadilyspurr 

 sued by eight-tenths of all the faijmers of this country, since itsfirst 

 settlement ; a system which proceeds upon the principle of taking 

 as many crops froin the land with as little manure as possit^e — 



until its productive powers are exhausted, and then^ emigrating 



to some part of the countiy where they can apply the same practice 

 to a new soil. It requires far less knowledge and ciapital to wear 

 out one good soil and abandon it for another, than to cultivate a 

 good soil so as to maintain its productive powers from year to yeaf, 

 unimpaired. Accordingly, -the emigration is always " to the west." 

 There, is ever the Arcadia of the American farmer ; there are the 

 acres which need but to be broken up by the plough, to yield their 

 thirty or forty bushels of wheat to the acre. Hence, the ever full 

 tide of farmers or farmers' sons, always sets westward, and the lands 

 at home are left in a comparatively exhausted and barren statCj and 

 ■ hence, too, the slow progress of farming as an honest art, where 

 eveiy body practises it like a highway robber. 



There are, doubtless, many superficial thinkers, who consider 

 these western soils exkaustless — ''prairies where crop after crop can 

 be taken, by generation after generation." There was never a 

 greater fallacy. There are acres and acres of land in the counties 

 bordering the Hudson-^such counties as Dutchess and Albany — 

 from which the early settlers reaped their thirty to forty bushels of 

 wheat to the acre, as easily as their great-grandchildren do now in 



