of force required for the production of vegetable matter, the more rapid is the circulation, the greater is the production of carbonic acid, and the greater the power for vegetable reproduction. The more complete the power of association, the more perfect becomes the cultivation the greater is the development of the powers of the land—and the more admirably does the beauty of all natural arrangements exhibit itself, in the perfect adjustment of all the parts and portions of the wonderful system of which we are a part.

Nevertheless, although the annual product of a single acre of land, employed in raising wheat, is capable of sustaining "animal warmth, and animal motive-power, in a vigorous man, during a period of more than two and a half years," and although such a man is capable of cultivating many acres, we can look in no direction without seeing that men are suffering for want of food. So, too, it is with regard to the supply of fuel, and of the materials of clothing, as well as houses, and all other of the commodities required for the maintenance of human health and life. The questions, therefore, naturally arise - Why is not more food produced? Why is the supply of cotton and wool so small? Why is not more clothing made? Why is not more coal mined? Why are not more houses built? - The reply to these questions may now be given.

§ 5. The nearer the place of production to that of consumption, and the closer the approximation of the prices of raw materials and finished products, the smaller will be the proportion of time and mind required for the labors of trade and transportation; the larger will be that which may be given to developing the powers of the earth; the greater will be the ability to maintain the powers of the land; the larger will be the return to labor; the greater must be the tendency towards increase in the power to obtain sufficient supplies of food, clothing, and fuel; and the greater the power to command the use of houses, mills, farms, and machinery of every description, the use of which may be desired.

For proof that such are the facts, we need but look to the Moorish Empire in Spain; to the Netherlands of the days of the

*ALLEN: Philosophy of the Mechanics of Nature, p. 736.

Burgundian princes, and thence to the present time; to France. of the present, and to all the countries now following in her lead, in maintaining the policy initiated by Colbert. In all of these, agriculture tends to become more a science, with constant increase in the yield of the land-in the development of human powers in the rapidity of circulation-in the power to maintain commerce at home and abroad-in the creation of local centres of action and in the freedom and power of man. For further proof, we need but look to Ireland, India, Jamaica, Turkey, and Portugal-countries that follow in the lead of England-all of them pursuing a policy that widens the distance between the consumer and the producer, and all finding its effects in the decay of agriculture in the exhaustion of the soil-in the decline of human intellect-in the sluggishness of the societary movementin the centralization of power-and in the growing subjection of those who labor to produce, to the direction of those who perform the works of trade and transportation.-In the first of these, the over-population theory finds less and less support with each succeeding day. In the last, we find "population always pressing upon subsistence," and requiring the aid of famine and pestilence for maintenance of the equilibrium-the doctrines of Mr. Malthus being merely descriptive of the state of things that has arisen in every country of the world that has been subjected to that British policy, so warmly denounced by Adam Smith, which has for its object the centralization, on a single spot of earth, of all the machinery of conversion for the world.

§ 6. Turning now to the United States, we find a country whose general policy-being that which is taught in the schools of England-looks to dispersion of the population, to the annihilation of the power of combination, to the exhaustion of the soil, and to increased subjection of the farmer to the risks attendant upon cultivation- the consequences being seen in the facts, that agriculture becomes less and less a science; that the yield of the land decreases; that the wheat culture is gradually receding towards the West; and that the power to maintain commerce with the world steadily declines. Comparing now the periods of protection, brief as they have been, with the longer free trade ones, we obtain new evidence of the great facts, that agriculture always VOL. III.-21

follows manufactures, and that the country which seeks to increase the supply of raw materials, must look to increase of the machinery of conversion for the power so to do. At no time has the supply of food been more complete, than in the closing years of the protective period which terminated in 1834. Nevertheless, under the free trade system, food became, a few years later, so very scarce, as to require its importation from foreign countries. Under the tariff of 1842, the increase became so great, that the supplies of 1847 exceeded, by more than 40 per cent., those of 1840, as here is shown.

Wheat.

Oats.

Totals.

Barley. Rye. Buckwheat. Indian Corn. 1840... 84,823,000 4,161,000 123,071,000 18.645.60% 7,291,000 377,531,000 615,522,000 1847. 114,245,000 5,649,000 167,867,000 29,222,000 11.075.000 539,350,000 | 867,826,000 Inc.,... 29,422,000 1,488,000 44,796,000 10,577,000 4 382.000 161,819,000 252,304,000

Nevertheless, the product of iron had increased, in that brief period, no less than 600,000 tons, and the consumption of cotton had fully doubled. Since then, the contrary course has been produced-its effects now exhibiting themselves in the facts, that the production of iron is smaller than it was ten years sincethat the domestic consumption of cotton has diminished — and that there is little surplus of food with which to purchase abroad either cloth or iron. All the phenomena of American history tend to prove, that the more the people are limited to the labors of the field, the less food they have to spare, and the lower are the prices; whereas, the more they are permitted to diversify their employments, the larger is the return to the work of cultivation, and the greater is the tendency towards a rise of prices. In the one case, we see them gradually, but certainly, receding towards the position occupied by England a century since, and in the other, as regularly advancing towards that now occupied by Germany and France.*

* "You have relied alone on the single power of agriculture — and such agriculture! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun. Your inattention to your only source of wealth has seared the bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed steer through the sedge-patches to procure a single beefsteak. The present condition of things has existed too long in Virginia. The landlord has skinned the tenant, and the tenant has skinned the land, until all have grown poor together!"-Gov. WISE: Address to the People of Virginia.

§ 7. Coming now to England, we find a country whose people are becoming, with each succeeding year, more dependent upon distant lands for supplies of rude products of the earth-while gradually exhausting each and all of those from which supplies have thus far been derived. Ireland can now do little more than feed herself. Portugal and Turkey are almost blotted from the list of nations. India produces less and less with each succeeding year. Jamaica and Demarara have wholly lost the importance they once possessed.* The work of destruction is proceeding rapidly in Brazil.† Virginia and Carolina decline from year to year. Wheat and tobacco, as objects of cultivation, are steadily passing westward, and leaving the older Atlantic States. The cotton-growing region of America, of half a century since, is now exhausted, while that of a later period is rapidly following in its train, and furnishing proof that the close of the present century must witness the near exhaustion of the American field of cotton cultivation. Look at it where we may, "thorns and thistles, illfavored and poisonous plants," mark the track of the British trader throughout the earth. such being the necessary result of a system which looks to giving to trade the mastery over commerce, and thus augmenting the exhausting, tax of transportation. "Before him lay original nature in her wild and sublime beauty," but "behind him he leaves the desert, a ruined and deformed land""childish desire of destruction, and a thoughtless squandering of vegetable treasures," having "destroyed the character of nature." "The emigrant," says a distinguished German, "rolls with fearful rapidity from East to West through America, and

The labor of the United States now being wasted for want of that power of combination which results from diversification in the modes of employment, would be cheaply paid for at $10,000,000 a day, or $3,000,000,000 a year. The destructive effects of the dispersive system now in progress, upon the agricultural interest, now (1858,) exhibits itself in the general destruction of crops-oats, corn, wheat, and hay, having failed throughout a large portion of the Union. When men come near together, they become masters of nature; when they separate, they become again her slaves-scientific agriculture always following in the wake of manufactures, and never preceding them.

*Thirty years since, Demarara exported annually more than 8,000,000 pounds of cotton, but it has ceased to be cultivated, and the best cotton land may now be purchased at fifty cents an acre. The plant is there a tree -requiring very little labor after it has once been grown. Kept well trimmed, it will continue bearing for half a century.

† See ante, vol. ii., p. 229.

See ante, vol. ii., pp. 198, 242.

the planter now leaves the already exhausted land," seeking "to produce a similar revolution in the West."*

The policy being thus exhaustive, its effects upon the people to whom the world is debtor for it, exhibit themselves in a perpetual effort fraudulently to increase the apparent quantities, even at the cost of health and life-almost everything that is eaten being more or less adulterated. Vinegar is water, made pungent with sulphuric acid. Tea is mixed with gypsum and the poisonous Prussian blue. Coffee is made of chicory—the chicory itself being charred with ground bullock's liver. Pepper is debased with linseed cakes. Sausages are made of meat that is diseased, while red lead forms the chief ingredient of curry powder - the miller and the baker, meanwhile, adulterating the bread. Verdigris poisons the pickles and preserves. Vermillion-itself adulterated with red lead-colors the cheese. Little, therefore, as the laborer is enabled to purchase of these commodities, that little is rendered less, and often destructive, by the intermixture of substances incapable of affording nourishment-great as is their power for producing disease, to be followed by death.

Turning from food to clothing, we meet, in all directions, frauds of the same description—the poor laborer finding his shirts to be largely composed of starch, while shoddy and cotton waste furnish the constituents of his woollen coat. So, too, is it with iron -the refuse of past ages being now used for furnishing the various nations of the world with material for steam-boilers, and railroad bars, of a character so inferior as to be largely destructive of life, and wholly destructive of the hopes of those who have found themselves compelled to use such iron.†

Why, now, is it that such things are needed? Why is it, that with a world as yet almost unoccupied, men should suffer, even

* See ante, vol. i., p. 84.

"At some of these works to which we have had our attention drawn, we regret to find that boiler-plates are being turned out in rather large quantities. We tremble at the consequences that may ensue when these plates are submitted to the work to which many boilers, both in our own country and in America, are now not unfrequently subjected.

"Boiler-makers ought to be aware that it is impossible to get a good plate at the prices at which some are being now supplied to them. The rage for low-priced iron occasions the gravest apprehensions in our minds, and we would desire to raise a loud note of warning against it. The safety or peril of hundreds of lives often depends upon the excellency or inferiority of a foot of iron."-Engineer, London, July, 1858.