16 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



VIRGINIA AND HER PROSPECTS. 



For many years, our attention has been 

 turned to the subject of the pecuniary pros- 

 pects of the agricultural portion of Virginia, 

 and perhaps it is not too much to say that our 

 position as Editor of the only agricultural pe- 

 riodical in the State, has afforded us peculiar 

 opportunities of investigating the subject. — 

 The result of our observations may be neither 

 uninteresting nor uninstructive to our readers. 



Our climate is fructifying, our soil is pro- 

 ductive, our markets are good, our farmers 

 are skilful and laborious, and yet, we are poor 

 very poor. Although we are not of those who 

 consider all earthly happiness to be concen- 

 trated in the possession of riches, yet we have 

 seen enough of the world to enable us to put 

 a proper estimate upon the grinding ills of 

 poverty. We have said that our climate was 

 propitious. The variety of our vegetables and 

 the flavor of our fruits prove, that Nature has 

 bestowed upon us the advantages that she 

 usually accords to our temperate latitude. — 

 We have said that our farmers are skilful and 

 laborious, and although there are undoubtedly 

 lazy men and skinned fields in Virginia, as eve- 

 ry where else, we do not hesitate to declare that 

 we have never seen any community of agri- 

 culturists in this country, amongst whom more 

 information or greater industry are to be found 

 than is exhibited by the farmers of Virginia. 

 Why is it, then, that we are poor whilst others 

 are growing rich? We answer, simply be- 

 cause we consume more than we produce. It 

 is not that we make less, but that we spend 

 more. 



Is extravagance, then, a feature of our South- 

 ern character? We propose to answer this ques- 

 tion by stating what we consider to be the exact 

 state of things in Virginia, which is probably 

 only a type of others of the older States of the 

 Southern country. Our forefathers found here, 

 an unexhausted soil, and their agricultural 

 products were not only abundant but the mo- 

 nopoly of the tobacco trade, which they almost 

 exclusively enjoyed, brought them enormous 

 incomes. Large incomes necessarily, amongst 

 an ardent, generous people, induced propor- 

 tionate expenditures. The institutions of the 



country, the character of the people, and the 

 circumstances of the times, begat an aristo- 

 cracy that contained within itself all the seeds 

 of good and evil with which such a state of 

 ■ society is always charged. Pride, a high 

 I sense of honor, refinement, extravagant habits, 

 and a prejudice against manual labor; these 

 i were the virtues and the vices that we inhe- 

 rited from our ancestors. But with these aris- 

 I tocratic tendencies, they did not bequeath us 

 j the means or the opportunity of enjoying them. 

 | If Napoleon could have continued to with- 

 draw from the cultivation of the earth the 

 \ millions of European peasants who were trans- 

 j ferred from the plough to the ranks of his op- 

 I ponents, American wheat might still have 

 j brought two dollars a bushel, and Virginia 

 might even yet have survived the competition 

 i of the growing West. But we are now suf- 

 fering from the cankers of a long peace. Our 

 great staples are no longer confined to the sea- 

 board; the forests of the West have yielded 

 to the axe and the plough, and at the same 

 j time that the demand has lessened, the product 

 ! has been increased. Our incomes have greatly 



diminished, whilst our expenditures have not 

 decreased in any thing like an equal ratio. — 

 The wealth of a country is measured not by 

 the actual annual production, but by the ex- 

 cess of production over consumption ; the man 

 who makes a thousand dollars per annum } 

 may add less to his store of wealth than he 

 who makes five hundred. Although necessity 

 and obvious wisdom have forced something of 

 economy upon us, such is the influence of ha- 

 bit, so hard is it to abridge the expenditures 

 to which we have been accustomed, that with 

 all our exertions, we are still behind the mark. 

 In other words, we believe that the people of 

 Virginia as a community, consume more than 

 they produce. The result is that they are left 

 entirely without means for the developement 

 of their unbounded natural resources. Our 

 people are not less generous, less noble, judi- 

 cious or enterprising than their northern neigh- 

 bors ; but they are poorer. They are suffering 

 from the moral incubus of habits and customs 

 totally unadapted to their circumstances, and 

 although they are struggling manfully to shake 

 it off, it is an obstacle that Time alone will 

 enable us to overcome. The moral difficulties 



