404 



THE SOUTHEKN PLANTER. 



[July 



before the work of resuscitation was begun. 



The comparative results of the opposite 

 systems of improving and exhausting culti- 

 vation may be thus illustrated. Suppose a 

 certain investment of capital will yield 

 twenty per cent, of present annual interest, 

 or nett products, and two persons invest 

 equal amounts in the business. The more 

 provident one draws and spends but fifteen 

 per cent, annually of his income, and leaves 

 the remaining five per cent, to accumulate 

 and to be added to his interest bearing cap- 

 ital. The other proprietor draws each year, 

 and spends all of the certain and annual 

 average returns of his capital, and five per 

 cent, more of the capital stock itself. He 

 reasons (may I say it?) like many cotton 

 planters, and infers that so small a detrac- 

 tion from bis ca])ital will do no harm, as he 

 will have so much tke more of quick returns 

 for immediate use or re-investment. In less 

 than twenty years, one of these individuals 

 will have doubled his original capital, and 

 also his twenty per cent, income, and the 

 other will have exhausted his entire fund. 



But it may be said, (as alleged in regard 

 to the squanderers of fertility,) that as the 

 latter person had received so much more of 

 annual returns at first, he might have re- 

 invested and thus have retained his over- 

 draughts of annual products. If a planter 

 — and, of course, his over-draughts had 

 been from the fertility of his land — he might 

 have bought another plantation, to work and 

 to wear out in like manner. But even if so. 



wherein would be the aain ? He 



Lid 



have had the disadvantages of a change of 

 investment, of removal, and making a new 

 settlement. But where one man would so 

 save and re-invest his over-draughts from 

 his capital, two others would use, or, per- 

 haps, spend theirs, as if so much actual 

 clear profit or permanent income. When 

 the land is utterly worn out, and the total 

 capital of fertility wasted, (or the small 

 remnant is incapable of paying the expenses 

 of farther cultivation,) it will most generally 

 be found that the channels into which the 

 early full streams of income flowed, are then 

 as dry as the sources. 



I do not mean that it necessarily follows 

 that the planter who- exhausts his land, also 

 lessens his general wealth. Would that it 

 were so. For, then, such certain and imme- 

 diate retribution would speedily stop the 

 whole course of wrong doing, and prevent 

 all the consequent evils. It may be rarely, 



and it mi-ght be never the case, that the ex- 

 hauster of land becomes absolutely poorer 

 during the operation. He will have helped 

 to impoverish his country, and to ruin it. 

 finally, (by the same general policy being 

 continued,) lie will have destroyed as much 

 of God's bounties as the wasted fertility, if 

 remaining, would have supplied forever, and 

 as many human beings as those supplies 

 would have supported, will be prevented 

 from existing. And yet the mighty de- 

 stroyer may have increased his own wealth. 

 Nevertheless, he does not escape his own, 

 and even the largest share of the general 

 loss he has caused. While thus destroying, 

 say $20,000 worth of fertility, the planter, 

 by the exercise of industry, economy and 

 talent in other departments of his business, 

 or from other resources, may have grown 

 richer by $10,000. But if, as I believe is 

 always true, it is as cheap and profitable to 

 save as to waste fertility, in the whole term 

 of culture, then the planter, in this case, 

 might have gained in all $30,000 of capital, 

 if be had saved, instead of wasting, the 

 original productive power of his land. 



Even if admitting the common fallacy 

 j which prevails in every newly settled coun- 

 try, that it is profitable to each individual 

 cultivator to wear out his land, still, by his 

 doing so, and all his fellow-proprietors doing 

 the like, while each one might be adding to 

 his individual wealth, the joint labours of 

 all would be exhausting the common stock 

 of wealth, and greatly impairing the com- 

 mon welfare and interest of all. The aver- 

 age life of a man is long enough to reduce 

 the fertility of his cultivated land to one- 

 half, or less. Thus, one generation of ex- 

 hausting cultivators, if working together, 

 would reduce their country to one-half of 

 its former production, and, in proportion, 

 would be reduced the general income, wealth 

 and means of living, population and the 

 ■products of taxation, and, in time, would as 

 I much decline the measure of moral, intel- 

 lectual and social advantages, the political 

 power and military strength of the com- 

 monwenlth. The destructive operations of 

 the exhausting cultivator have most import- 

 ant influence far beyond his own lands and 

 j his own personal interests. He reduces the 

 wealth and population of his country and 

 the world, and obstructs the progress and 

 benefits of education, the social virtues, and 

 even moral and religious culture. For upon 

 the productions of the earth depends more 



