THE POLICY OF AMERICAN FARMERS.—SARATOGA FARMING. 
365 
color, and a very superior animal. In September, 
1843, he took the first prize as the best bull in the 
first class, at the Rensselaer County Agricultural 
show ; October following he took the first prize at 
the cattle show of the American Institute in New 
York; and the present year at the exhibition of 
the State Agricultural Society at Poughkeepsie, he 
took the first prize of $20 as the best bull present 
of any breed, and another of $15 as the best 3 
year old bull in the class of Durhams. 
THE POLICY OP AMERICAN FARMERS—No. II. 
In the adoption of a system for the better 
support of American agriculture, we deny and 
utterly discard the idea of any local, partial, or 
selfish policy. On the contrary, we believe, the 
just interests of that portion of the community 
whose claims we advocate, are identified with the 
prosperity of every other truly national pursuit, 
and inseparable from it. A flourishing commerce 
is essential to the transportation of such commod¬ 
ities as are either directly or indirectly derived from 
our soil. Successful manufactures are necessary 
to the consumption of our own products, which can 
in no other way find a profitable market , and their 
fabrics are » in all cases , sooner or later , afforded 
to the consumer at a lower price and of a better 
quality than the foreign article , after they have , 
by a little timely aid from the protecting arm of 
government, been nurtured into maturity. By a 
salutary division of labor, too, they direct from the 
tillage of the earth a portion of our citizens, 
who would otherwise overload the country with 
their products, and reduce them to a ruinous price. 
Merchants, being the factors of the agricultural 
class, are benefited in proportion to their prosper¬ 
ity ; and nearly all the other professions and pur¬ 
suits, deriving their support from them, are certain 
to be remunerated with a full share of their profits. 
We look for the promotion of the farming inter¬ 
ests to other sources than the depression of other 
pursuits. Our republican institutions can not be 
made to sustain any such policy, if we were dis¬ 
posed to adopt it. Our community is not parcelled 
out into distinct and unchangeable orders and 
classes, like the castes of the ancient Egyptians 
and modern Hindoos; or in the iron-bound system 
of feudalism of the middle ages ; or like the pres¬ 
ent national arrangement of serf and noble in Rus¬ 
sia and the eastern portion of modern Europe; or 
even like the hereditary orders and almost impas¬ 
sable barriers by which the policy of the English 
government, and the crushing weight of prescrip¬ 
tive public opinion has effectually hedged in 
the various crafts and professions of her citizens, 
and renders any change, unless under peculiarly 
favorable circumstances, next to impossible. On 
the other hand, we are a people, homogeneous for 
all purposes of occupation or employment. The 
lawyer of to-day is the merchant to-morrow, and a 
farmer the day after; the inheritor of thousands, 
by his ignorance or vices, finds himself, before 
middle age, stripped of his ancestral domains, 
and compelled to toil for a livelihood during the 
remainder of his life; while the poor and un¬ 
educated boy, by dint of industry, intelligence, and 
economy, rises rapidly through all the gradations 
of emolument and rank which the country and its 
institutions afford. Our republican condition has 
an absolute and ever-operating principle of equali¬ 
zation among the various parts which make up 
the mass; like the hydrostatic law, which compels 
the liquid in a series of vessels connected at their 
base, to part with just such a proportion of its 
fluid as will restore the exact level of the whole, 
when from any cause a quantity has been added to 
or substracted from either. But in the body poli¬ 
tic this is a work of time, and frequently of great 
loss and inconvenience, and as the mass can not 
immediately change their pursuits, a just policy 
would seem to prescribe that every contemplated 
change of system in national affairs should be made 
with a reference to entire permanence in the end, 
and all practicable moderation in the means by 
which it is to be effected. 
When changes in national pursuits are required, 
as they are in the progress of events, our states¬ 
men should look with an enlightened forecast into 
the future, and determine what channels labor and 
capital shall pursue, with the greatest prospect ot 
reward, and the least probability of interference 
hereafter. Vacillation in national affairs is the 
great bane to be feared in a republic where univer¬ 
sal suffrage prevails, and it must be confessed, our 
own has given some signal examples of it. R. 
SARATOGA FARMING. 
A. sojourn of some few months in the pleasant 
village of Saratoga, has enabled me to become 
somewhat acquainted with the agriculture of its 
neighborhood, and condition of its farmers. Be¬ 
lieving it to be a district of which little is known 
of it, save its salubrity, its health-restoring, and 
pleasure-affording springs, I would wish to trouble 
you with a few remarks on other features, whose 
importance maybe estimated rather at what they 
should be than what they are. To tell you that 
the soil hereabouts is commonly a sandy loam, 
resting, in some instances, on a retentive subsoil, 
and in others on a lime-stone, and still in others 
on rudely compacted concretions of granite, is, 
perhaps, sending “ coals to Newcastle,” or telling 
you what you know already. Let. me proceed at 
once, therefore, to the cultivation of this soil and 
its productions. 
The same ruinous rotation, if it be worthy the 
name, which marks generally the farming of the 
state, is found here flourishing in all the perfection 
and glory of its absurdity and ruination. Grass 
from two to six years, according to the tendency 
of the tiller’s inclination to dispose it otherwise, 
or of the wild mulleins to hide from view his 
pigs and sheep; then follows a corn crop; then 
rye, or oats, followed sometimes by wheat laid 
down to grass again; but very frequently the 
land returns to grass with the rye or oats. Pota¬ 
toes are grown sometimes after one crop, some¬ 
times after another—they have no decided position 
in this system. As regards produce, it is as you 
may anticipate, fully in accordance with the rota¬ 
tion, poor enough to what it ought to be. Corn, 
30 bushels per acre; wheat, 14 bushels; Oats, 
