Maple sugar is obtained in great quantities in Vermont, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio, and Kentucky. Sugar has also been procured from corn-stalks; but it has hitherto been found difficult to crystallize.

The sugar-cane may be planted to advantage as far as the 31st degree of north latitude, in Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana.† The last-mentioned state produced in 1810 about 10 millions, and in 1838 over 100 millions of pounds.

Orange-trees and date-palms north of the 30th degree of latitude are liable to suffer from the frost.

The rice culture is extended throughout the Atlantic slave states. In the year 1840, South Carolina produced 26,964,000 kilogrammes; Georgia, 6,099,000; Louisiana, 1,802,000, &c.‡

The silk culture is making considerable progress, and in many states is encouraged by bounties; but there is a want of persons sufficiently acquainted with its management, and the wages for the necessary hand-labor are very high. Experiments made with different sorts of mulberry-trees and silk-worms have led to useful discoveries.§-The cultivation of the tea-plant and olivetree has been commenced in many places; with respect to the latter at least, the prospects are good.

The principal seat of the tobacco culture, performed by slaves and exhausting to the soil, is Virginia. There were exported on an average,||

from 1772 to 1775 annually 99,000,000 pounds.

Thus the exportation of raw tobacco has not risen on the whole; but that of manufactured tobacco and snuff has. The domestic consumption in America has increased still more; so that there is reckoned three times as much per head as in England, and eight times as much as in France. Nay, it is asserted that the value of the tobacco consumed in New York exceeds that of all the bread used there.

No branch of agriculture has made such great progress as that of cotton-planting. In the year 1784, a very trifling quantity was sent out by way of experiment to Liverpool; in 1793, the export amounted to 487,000 pounds; in 1803, to 41 million pounds; in 1823, to 174 millions; in 1833, to 325 millions; in 1841, to 530 millions. From a single pound of cotton a thread can be * A large tree furnishes in the spring from 10 to 15 pounds of sugar. Warden, i. 449. Buckingham's Eastern States, i. 157.

Ferry, p. 74. Encycl. Amer., art. Louisiana.

i. 307.

Poussin, Richesses Américanes, ii. 290.

Buckingham's Slave States,

Hinton, ii. 210. Hamilton's Eastern States, ii. 89. Southern States, i. 205. Amer. Almanac for 1838, p. 123.

¶ Gerstner, p. 304.

Seabroock's Memoir on the Cultivation of Cotton.

spun 180 miles in length; and the threads spun in England during a year would reach 51 times from the earth to the sun.*

By means of a machine invented by Whitney of Massachusetts for cleaning cotton, so much tedious manual labor is saved, as to lower the price without too much diminishing the profits. Yet fears are entertained respecting the competition of cotton from the East Indies, where free labor is cheaper than slave labor in the United States. The prospects for Carolina and the eastern coast in particular are by no means flattering; since the soil of the southern part of the Mississippi valley is much more fertile, and the returns are greater with less outlay.

Although statistical tables of the extent and productions of trades and agriculture are necessarily subject to great imperfections, especially as the produce of the several years is so very different, I still submit a few figures from the last census, that of 1840, in the note below. From these it appears that almost every branch of agriculture thrives; Indian corn plays a far more important part than wheat; rye, barley, and hops are comparatively little cultivated; flax and hemp bear no proportion to the cotton; the culture of the vine, of silk, &c. is just beginning. Of course the northern states cultivate neither sugar-cane nor cotton, the Carolinas neither flax nor hemp, and Louisiana no wheat. The distillation of ardent spirits has very much decreased

*For some particulars respecting cotton, see my Briefe aus Columbia. There were in the United States,

124,000

Wine, gallons

130,000

For 1842, see 27th Congress, third session, Senate, p. 129. Agricultural Statistics. Great complaints have been made of late years respecting a dangerous disease among the potatoes, and for which the most various and even opposite causes have been assigned. At first there often appears a black speck, which quickly spreads and produces rottenness, or the whole turns into a slimy substance. It is communicated by contact. Hogs have died after eating of these black potatoes.

in consequence of the temperance societies. The breeding of swine confers new advantages, since a mode has been discovered of making a very useful oil out of the lard and fat.

In the theory and practice of agriculture, as for instance the rotation of crops, manuring, machines of all kinds, physical and chemical appliances, &c., great progress has been made in later times.* Many societies and periodicals have been established for these purposes, tending to the promotion of agriculture and horticulture; and their operations have been uncommonly beneficial in increasing and disseminating useful knowledge. Thus there emanated from the New York Society of Agriculture the plan of imparting the principles of husbandry, physics, and chemistry to children in public schools, and to cause proper books on these sciences to be written for the district libraries. This last part of the plan will doubtless be attended with good effects; but with respect to the first part, there are still some scruples to be tested and removed, as for instance with respect to the ability of the teachers, the extension of the hours of study, the various destinations of the scholars, particularly in cities, the danger of a too directly practical tendency, &c. This society, like many others, holds fairs, and offers premiums, e. g. for the best managed farm or dairy, the best yield of grain, specimens of silk culture, foddering, irrigation, &c.

The assertion which has sometimes been made, that the country people who began with log-cabins and wooden houses would retain them without caring for any thing better, is wholly erroneous. The gradual but rapid improvements which are effected cannot fail to strike every observer.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PUBLIC LANDS.

Claims of the single States-Mode of Sale.

THE strongest evidence of a happy youth, the best means of preserving it, and the surest guaranty for a prosperous future, are furnished by the yet unoccupied public lands. The general government obtained possession of them in the fairest manner: by purchase from foreign powers and from the Indians, and by a

Natural History of New York, i. 128. Excellent reports have also appeared respecting agriculture in Massachusetts.

praiseworthy cession on the part of the several older states.* It is true those tracts might in a certain sense be called ownerless; but it was in conformity with and conducive to good order, not to let every one seize upon and appropriate the lands at his own discretion, but to allow the government to proceed with system and method, and promulge judicious laws respecting them. Those individuals who had settled here and there at pleasure were treated with proper fairness and allowed the right of preemption.†

When greater assumptions on the part of individuals had properly been repulsed, some states preferred the claim that all the land lying within their boundaries belonged to them, and that the general government had nothing to do with it.

To this it was replied: Although a territory, when its inhabitants amount to the requisite number, is raised to the rank of a state of the great confederacy, it does not follow that the Union has bestowed or must bestow on it all the public land lying within its borders. The new settlers possess not the slightest right in this respect; whereas the right of the Union rests on purchase and cession, has never been disputed, but has been confirmed times without number. Such a partial and inconsiderate bestowal of the public lands would rob the government of one of its principal sources of revenue, cast all the burthens of the state upon the customs, and deprive the older states of what they obtained for their money or by their exertions. They have purchased, defended, surveyed, valued, and brought it into market, and have employed the proceeds for the public good; the government shows itself reasonable enough, in claiming no rights of sovereignty within the bounds of an individual state, but only the rights of a private proprietor, while it also assumes the obligations that rest on

one.

The moderate defenders of the claims of those states responded: Our purpose is not to make an immense donation to them, but to simplify the inappropriate and complicated duties of the central administration, to do away with injurious influences, and to put an end to perpetual disputes between Congress and the single states; in order however to supply the wants of the general government, we will take from the proceeds of the sales conducted by the states so much per centum as remains after deducting the expenses of managing the lands. Should the management and sale of the lands lying in the several states be transferred to them, the sums to be paid to the general government would be augmented rather than diminished; and consequently the Union would not be a loser, but a gainer, by the more active exertions of the states.

*Namely, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee. Statutes of South Carolina, i. 169. Murray, ii. 432,

† Arend's Mississippi, p. 227.

Calhoun's Speeches, pp. 405, 452.

In recent times many whigs have gone beyond these propositions, and vehemently advocated an unconditional distribution of the proceeds of the public lands among the single states; while the democrats have combated this demand with equal zeal. The former have often assumed without proof, that if the proceeds were not distributed in the above manner, the amount would be senselessly squandered away. But since the decision relative to the disposal of these moneys rests with Congress, such an abuse is nearly impossible, or at least it is not easy to perceive what security there is for a more judicious course of proceeding on the part of the single states. The fear lest the states within which the lands lie should forcibly take possession of them and let the other states have nothing, is also exaggerated; for the majority in Congress would always guard against such open usurpation.

If the income from the public domain is large, this fortunate circumstance should be employed for the reduction of taxes; but it seems almost as though there were a desire to cut off this resource, for the sake of raising the duties (for this and totally different objects) constantly higher. At any rate a deficiency in the income from the land must be covered in one way or another; and the joy at its distribution would be turned into sorrow on reflecting that, besides the amount of such deficiency, the expenses of managing the customs must also be raised; which would be giving each individual a five-franc piece, and taking from his pocket a silver dollar.

Both the letter and the spirit of the federal Constitution point to the revenue arising from land, as the first financial resource of the Union; and in fact it would be no misfortune, if there were no need of any other tax. Those certainly who wish to annihilate it cannot call themselves conservative in this respect. On the contrary they must own that what they propose is an innovation, and are under the necessity of proving that it would be beneficial. If, however, at some future period all the public lands should be sold, and this source of revenue be exhausted, the wealth and population of the country will have been so much increased in the meanwhile, that even a far greater amount can be easily raised. For the present, I agree with an earlier declaration of Henry Clay, where he says (Speeches, ii. 112: "Every consideration of duty to ourselves and to posterity enjoins that we should abstain from the adoption of any wild project that would cast away this vast national property, holden by the general government in sacred trust for the whole people of the United States."*

Besides many millions of acres of uncultivated land which are the undisputed property of the single states, the land belonging to A second very eloquent passage in favor of retaining the proceeds of the public lands is found in Clay's Speeches, ii. 490.