Part 2 — CHAPTER I. AGRICULTURE.

"Plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche, moins le gouvernement peut usurper sur le Souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique est donc en ceci, d'agir à grandes distances. A l'aide des points d'appui qu'il se donne, sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des léviers. Celle du peuple, au contraire, n'agit que concentrée: elle s'évapore et se perd en s'étendant, comme l'effet de la poudre éparse à terre, et qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la tyrannie. Les bêtes féroces ne règnent que dans les déserts."

Rousseau.

The pride and delight of Americans is in their quantity of land. I do not remember meeting with one to whom it had occurred that they had too much. Among the many complaints of the minority, this was never one. I saw a gentleman strike his fist on the table in an agony at the country being so "confoundedly prosperous:" I heard lamentations over the spirit of speculation; the migration of young men to the back country; the fluctuating state of society from the incessant movement westwards; the immigration of labourers from Europe; and the ignorance of the sparse population. All these grievances I heard perpetually complained of; but in the same breath I was told in triumph of the rapid sales of land; of the glorious additions which had been made by the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and of the probable gain of Texas. Land was spoken of as the unfailing resource against over manufacture; the great wealth of the nation; the grand security of every man in it.

On this head, the two political parties seem to be more agreed than on any other. The federalists are the great patrons of commerce; but they are as proud of the national lands as the broadest of the democrats. The democrats, however, may be regarded as the patrons of agriculture, out of the slave States. There seems to be a natural relation between the independence of property and occupation enjoyed by the agriculturist, and his watchfulness over State Rights and the political importance of individuals. The simplicity of country life, too, appears more congenial with the workings of democratic institutions, than the complex arrangements of commerce and manufactures.

The possession of land is the aim of all action, generally speaking, and the cure for all social evils, among men in the United States. If a man is disappointed in politics or love, he goes and buys land. If he disgraces himself, he betakes himself to a lot in the west. If the demand for any article of manufacture slackens, the operatives drop into the unsettled lands. If a citizen's neighbours rise above him in the towns, he betakes himself where he can be monarch of all he surveys. An artisan works, that he may die on land of his own. He is frugal, that he may enable his son to be a landowner. Farmers' daughters go into factories that they may clear off the mortgage from their fathers' farms; that they may be independent landowners again. All this is natural enough in a country colonised from an old one, where land is so restricted in quantity as to be apparently the same thing as wealth. It is natural enough in a young republic, where independence is of the highest political value. It is natural enough in a country where political economy has never been taught by its only effectual propounder—social adversity. And, finally, it falls out well for the old world, in prospect of the time when the new world must be its granary.

The democratic party are fond of saying that the United States are intended to be an agricultural country. It seems to me that they are intended to be everything. The Niagara basin, the Mississippi valley, and the South, will be able to furnish the trading world with agricultural products for ever,—for aught we can see. But it is clear that there are other parts of the country which must have recourse to manufactures and commerce.

The first settlers in New England got land, and thought themselves rich. Their descendants have gone on to do the same; and they now find themselves poor. With the exception of some Southerners, ruined by slavery, who cannot live within their incomes, I met with no class in the United States so anxious about the means of living as the farmers of New England. In the seventeenth century, curious purchases of land were made, and the fathers were wealthy. In those days, a certain farmer Dexter bought the promontory of Nahant, which stretches out into Massachusetts Bay, of Black Willey, an Indian chief, for a suit of clothes; the part of the promontory called Great Nahant measuring a mile and a half in circuit. Others, who held land in similar or larger quantities, divided it equally among their children, whose portions had not been subdivided below the point of comfort, when the great west on the one hand, and the commerce of the seas on the other, opened new resources. From this time, the consolidation of estates has gone on, nearly as fast as the previous division. The members of a family dispose of their portions of land to one, and go to seek better fortunes elsewhere than the rocky soil of New England can afford. Still, while the population of Massachusetts is scarcely above half that of London, its number of landowners is greater than that of all England.

The Massachusetts farmers were the first to decline; but now the comparative adversity of agriculture has extended even into Vermont. A few years ago, lenders of money into Vermont received thirty per cent. interest from farmers: now they are glad to get six per cent.; and this does not arise from the farmers having saved capital of their own. They have but little property besides their land. Their daughters, and even their sons, resort to domestic service in Boston for a living. Boston used to be supplied from Vermont with fowls, butter, and eggs: but the supply has nearly ceased. This is partly owing to an increased attention to the growth of wool for the manufacturers; but partly also to the decrease of capital and enterprise among the farmers.

In Massachusetts the farmers have so little property besides their land, that they are obliged to mortgage when they want to settle a son or daughter, or make up for a deficient crop. The great Insurance Company at Boston is the formidable creditor to many. This Company will not wait a day for the interest. If it is not ready, loss or ruin ensues. Many circumstances are now unfavourable to the old-fashioned Massachusetts farmer. Domestic manufactures, which used to employ the daughters, are no longer worth while, in the presence of the factories. The young men, who should be the daughters' husbands, go off to the west. The idea of domestic service is not liked. There is an expensive family at home, without sufficient employment; and they may be considered poor. These are evils which may be shaken off any day. I speak of them, not as demanding much compassion, but as indicating a change in the state of affairs; and especially that New England is designed to be a manufacturing and commercial region. It is already common to see agriculture joined with other employments. The farmers of the coast are, naturally, fishermen also. They bring home fish, manure their land with the offal; sow their seed, and go out again to fish while it is growing. Shoemaking is now joined with farming. In the long winter evenings, all the farmers' families around Lynn are busy shoe-making; and in the spring, they turn out into the fields again. The largest proportion of factory girls too is furnished by country families.

The traveller may see, by merely passing through the country, without asking information, how far New England ought to be an agricultural country, if the object of its society be to secure the comfort of its members, rather than the continuance of old customs. The valleys, like that of the Connecticut river, whose soil is kept rich by annual inundations, and whose fields have no fences, gladden the eye of the observer. So it is with particular spots elsewhere, where, it may be remarked, the fences are of the ordinary, slovenly kind, and too much care does not seem to have been bestowed on the arrangements and economy of the estate. Elsewhere, may be seen stony fields, plots of the greenest pasture, with grey rocks standing up in the midst, and barberry bushes sprinkled all about: trim orchards, and fences on which a great deal of spare time must have been bestowed. Instead of the ugly, hasty snake-fence, there is a neatly built wall, composed of the stones which had strewed the fields: sometimes the neatest fence of all; a wall of stones and sods, regularly laid, with a single rail along the top: sometimes a singular fence, which would be perfect, but for the expense of labour required; roots of trees, washed from the soil, and turned side upwards, presenting a complete chevaux-de-frise, needing no mending, and lasting the "for ever" of this world. About these farm-houses, a profusion of mignonette may be seen; and in the season, the rich major convolvulus, or scarlet runners, climbing up to the higher windows. The dove-cotes are well looked to. There has evidently been time and thought for everything. This is all very pretty to look at,—even bewitching to those who do not see beneath the surface, nor know that hearts may be aching within doors about perilous mortgages, and the fate of single daughters; but, it being known that such worldly anxieties do exist, it is not difficult to perceive that these are the places in which they abide.

There is, of course, a knowledge of the difficulty on the spot; but not always a clear view of coming events, which include a remedy. The commonest way of venting any painful sensibility on the subject, is declamation against luxury; or rather, against the desire for it in those who are supposed unable to afford it. This will do no good. If the Pilgrim Fathers themselves had had luxury before their eyes, they would have desired to have it; and they would have been right. Luxury is, in itself, a great good. Luxury is delicious fare,—of any and every kind: and He who bestowed it meant all men to have it. The evil of luxury is in its restriction; in its being made a cause of separation between men, and a means of encroachment by some on the rights of others. Frugality is a virtue only when it is required by justice and charity. Luxury is vicious only when it is obtained by injustice, and carried on into intemperance. It is a bad thing that a Massachusetts farmer should mortgage his farm, in order that his wife and daughters may dress like the ladies of Boston; but the evil is not in the dress; it is rather in his clinging to a mode of life which does not enable him to pay his debts. The women desire dress, not only because it is becoming, but because they revolt from sinking, even outwardly, into a lower station of life than they once held: and this is more than harmless; it is honourable. What they have to do is to make up their minds to be consistent. They must either go down with their farm, for love of it, and the ways which belong to it: or they must make a better living in some other manner. They cannot have the old farm and its ways, and luxury too. Nobody has a right to decide for them which they ought to choose; and declaiming against luxury will therefore do no good. It is, however, pretty clear which they will choose, while luxury and manufactures are growing before their eyes; and, in that case, declaiming against luxury can do little but harm: it will only destroy sympathy between the declaimers and those who may find the cap fit.

One benevolent lady strongly desires and advises that manufactures should be put down; and the increased population all sent away somewhere, that New England may be as primitive and sparsely peopled as in days when it was, as she supposes, more virtuous than now. Whenever she can make out what virtue is, so as to prove that New England was ever more virtuous than now, her plans may find hearers; but not till then. I mention these things merely to show how confirmed is the tendency of New England to manufactures, in preference to agriculture.

There is one certain test of the permanent fitness of any district of country for agricultural purposes; the settlement of any large number of Germans in it. The Germans give any price for good land, and use it all. They are much smiled at by the vivacious and enterprising Americans for their plodding, their attachment to their own methods, and the odd direction taken by their pride.[12] The part of Pennsylvania where they abound is called the Bœotia of America. There is a story current against them that they were seen to parade with a banner, on which was inscribed "No schools," when the State legislature was about establishing a school system. On the other hand, it is certain that they have good German newspapers prepared among themselves: that their politics do them high honour, considering the very short political education they have had: and that they know more of political economy than their native neighbours. They show by their votes that they understand the tariff and bank questions; and they are staunch supporters of democratic principles.

Nothing can be more thriving than the settlements of Germans, when they have once been brought into order. Their fields are well fenced; their implements of the most substantial make; and their barns a real curiosity. While the family of the farmer is living in a poor log-house, or a shabby, unpainted frame-house, the barn has all the pains of its owner lavished upon it. I saw several, freshly painted with red, with eleven glass windows, with venetian blinds, at each end, and twelve in front. They keep up the profitable customs of their country. The German women are the only women seen in the fields and gardens in America, except a very few Dutch, and the slaves in the south. The stores of pumpkins, apples, and onions in the stoup (piazza) are edifying to behold. Under them sits the old dame of the house, spinning at her large wheel; and her grand-children, all in grey homespun, look as busy as herself.

The German settlers always contrive to have a market, either by placing themselves near one, or bestirring themselves to make one. They have no idea of sitting down in a wilderness, and growing wild in it. A great many of them are market-gardeners near the towns.[13]

It is scarcely possible to foresee, with distinctness, the destination of the southern States, east of the Alleghanies, when the curse of slavery shall be removed. Up to that period, continual deterioration is unavoidable. Efforts are being made to compensate for the decline of agriculture by pushing the interests of commerce. This is well; for the "opening" of every new rail-road, of every new pier, is another blow given to slavery. The agriculture of Virginia continues to decline; and her revenue is chiefly derived from the rearing of slaves as stock for the southern market. In the north and west parts of this State, where there is more farming than planting, it has long been found that slavery is ruinous; and when I passed through, in the summer of 1835, I saw scarcely any but whites, for some hundreds of miles along the road, except where a slave trader was carrying down to the south the remains that he had bought up. Unless some new resource is introduced, Virginia will be almost impoverished when the traffic in slaves comes to an end; which, I have a strong persuasion, will be the case before very long. The Virginians themselves are, it seems, aware of their case. I saw a factory at Richmond, worked by black labour, which was found, to the surprise of those who tried the experiment, to be of very good quality.

The shores of the south, low and shoaly, are unfavourable to foreign commerce. The want of a sufficiency of good harbours will probably impel the inhabitants of the southern States to renew their agricultural pursuits, and merely confine themselves to internal commerce. The depression of agriculture is only temporary, I believe. It began from slavery, and is aggravated by the opening of the rich virgin soils of the south-west. But the time will come when improved methods of tillage, with the advantage of free labour, will renew the prosperity of Virginia, and North and South Carolina.

No mismanagement short of employing slaves will account for the deterioration of the agricultural wealth of these States. When the traveller observes the quality of some of the land now under cultivation, he wonders how other estates could have been rendered so unprofitable as they are. The rich Congaree bottoms, in South Carolina, look inexhaustible; but some estates, once as fine, now lie barren and deserted. I went over a plantation, near Columbia, South Carolina, where there were four thousand acres within one fence, each acre worth fifteen hundred dollars. This land has been cropped yearly with cotton since 1794, and is now becoming less productive; but it is still very fine. The cotton seed is occasionally returned to the soil; and this is the only means of renovation used. Four hundred negroes work this estate. We saw the field trenched, ready for sowing. The sowing is done by hand, thick, and afterwards thinned. I saw the cotton elsewhere, growing like twigs. I saw also some in pod. There are three or four pickings of pods in a season; of which the first gathering is the best. Each estate has its cotton press. In the gin, the seed is separated from the cotton; and the latter is pressed and packed for sale.

There seems nothing to prevent the continuance or renovation of the growth of this product, under more favourable circumstances. Whether the rice swamps will have to be given up, or whether they may be tilled by free black labour, remains to be seen. The Chinese grow rice; and so do the Italians, without the advantage of free black labour. If, in the worst case, the rice swamps should have to be relinquished, the loss would be more than compensated by the improvement which would take place in the farming districts; land too high for planting. The western, mountainous parts of these States would thus become the most valuable.

It was amusing to hear the praises of corn (Indian corn) in the midst of the richest cotton, rice, and tobacco districts. The Indian looks with silent wonder upon the settler, who becomes visibly a capitalist in nine months, on the same spot where the red man has remained equally poor, all his life. In February, both are alike bare of all but land, and a few utensils. By the end of the next November, the white settler has his harvest of corn; more valuable to him than gold and silver. It will procure him many things which they could not. A man who has corn, may have everything. He can sow his land with it; and, for the rest, everything eats corn, from slave to chick. Yet, in the midst of so much praise of corn, I found that it cost a dollar a bushel; that every one was complaining of the expenses of living; that, so far from mutton being despised, as we have been told, it was much desired, but not to be had; and that milk was a great rarity. Two of us, in travelling, asked for a draught of milk. We had each a very small tumbler-full, and were charged a quarter-dollar. The cultivation of land is as exclusively for exportable products, as in the West Indies, in the worst days of their slavery; when food, and even bricks for building, were imported from England. The total absence of wise rural economy, under the present system, opens great hope of future improvement. The forsaken plantations are not so exhausted of their resources as it is supposed, from their producing little cotton, that they must be. The deserted fields may yet be seen, some day, again fruitful in cotton, with corn-fields, pasturage, and stock, (not human,) flourishing in appropriate spots.

Adversity is the best teacher of economy here, as elsewhere. In the first flush of prosperity, when a proprietor sits down on a rich virgin soil, and the price of cotton is rising, he buys bacon and corn for his negroes, and other provisions for his family, and devotes every rod of his land to cotton-growing. I knew of one in Alabama, who, like his neighbours, paid for his land and the maintenance of his slaves with the first crop, and had a large sum over, wherewith to buy more slaves and more land. He paid eight thousand dollars for his land, and all the expenses of the establishment, and had, at the end of the season, eleven thousand dollars in the bank. It was thought, by a wise friend of this gentleman's, that it was a great injury, instead of benefit to his fortune, that his labourers were not free. To use this wise man's expression, "it takes two white men to make a black man work;" and he was confident that it was not necessary, on any pretence whatever, to have a single slave in Alabama. Where all the other elements of prosperity exist, as they do in that rich new State, any quality and amount of labour might be obtained, and the permanent prosperity of the country might be secured. If matters go on as they are, Alabama will in time follow the course of the south-eastern States, and find her production of cotton declining; and she will have to learn a wiser husbandry by vicissitude. But matters will not go on as they are to that point. Cotton-growing is advancing rapidly in other parts of the world where there is the advantage of cheap, free labour; and the southern States of America will find themselves unable to withstand the competition of rivals whom they now despise, but by the use of free labour, and of the improved management which will accompany it. There is already a great importation of mules for field work from the higher western States. Who knows but that in time there may be cattle-shows, (like those of the more prosperous rural districts of the north,) where there are now slave markets; or at least agricultural societies, whereby the inhabitants may be put in the way of obtaining tender "sheep's meat," while cotton may be grown more plentifully than even at present?

I saw at Charleston the first great overt act of improvement that I am aware of in South Carolina. One step has been taken upwards; and when I saw it, I could only wish that the slaves in the neighbourhood could see, as clearly as a stranger could, the good it portended to them. It is nothing more than that an enterprising gentleman has set up a rice-mill, and that he avails himself to the utmost of its capabilities; but this is made much of in that land of small improvement; as it ought to be. The chaff is used to enrich the soil: and the proprietor has made lot after lot of bad land very profitable for sale with it, and is thus growing rapidly rich. The sweet flour, which lies between the husk and the grain, is used for fattening cattle. The broken rice is sold cheap; and the rest finds a good market. There are nine persons employed in the mill, some white and some black; and many more are busy in preparing the lots of land, and in building on them. Clusters of houses have risen up around the mill.

Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, present the extreme case of the fertility of the soil, the prosperity of proprietors, and the woes of slaves. I found the Virginians spoke with sorrow and contempt of the treatment of slaves in North and South Carolina: South Carolina and Georgia, of the treatment of slaves in the richer States to the west: and, in these last, I found the case too bad to admit of aggravation. It was in these last that the most heart-rending disclosures were made to me by the ladies, heads of families, of the state of society, and of their own intolerable sufferings in it. As I went further north again, I found an improvement. There was less wealth in the hands of individuals, a better economy, more intelligent slaves, and more discussion how to get rid of slavery. Tennessee is, in some sort, naturally divided on the question. The eastern part of the State is hilly, and fit for farming; for which slave labour does not answer. The western part is used for cotton-planting; and the planters will not yet hear of free labour. The magnificent State of Kentucky has no other drawback to its prosperity than slavery; and its inhabitants are so far convinced of this that they will, no doubt, soon free themselves from it. They cannot look across the river, and witness the prosperity of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, without being aware that, with their own unequalled natural advantages, they could not be so backward as they are, from any other cause.

Kentucky is equally adapted for agriculture and commerce. She may have ports on the rivers, along her whole northern and western boundary; and she has already roads superior to almost any in the United States. She is rich in stone, and many other minerals; in mineral waters, and in a soil of unsurpassed fertility. The State is more thickly settled than is evident to the passing traveller; and the effect will appear when more markets, or roads to existing markets, are opened. In one small county which I visited, my host and his brother had farms of fifteen hundred acres each; and there were two hundred and fifty other farms in the county. Sometimes these farms are divided among the children. More commonly, all the sons but one go elsewhere to settle. In this case, the homestead is usually left to the youngest son, who is supposed likely to be the most attached to the surviving parent.

The estates of the two brothers, mentioned above, comprising three thousand acres, were bought of the Indians for a rifle. We passed a morning in surveying the one which is a grazing farm. There is a good red-brick house for the family: and the slave-quarter is large. Nothing can be more beautiful than the aspect of the estate, from the richness of its vegetation, and the droves of fine cattle that were to be seen everywhere. I never saw finer cattle. The owner had just refused sixty dollars apiece for fourteen of them. Fifteen acres of the forest are left for shade; and there, and under single oaks in the cleared pasture, were herds of horses and mules, and three donkeys; the only ones I saw in the United States.

We passed an unshaded meadow, where the grass had caught fire every day at eleven o'clock, the preceding summer. This demonstrates the necessity of shade.

We passed "a spontaneous rye-field." I asked what "spontaneous" meant here; and found that a fine crop of rye had been cut the year before; and that the nearly equally fine one now before us had grown up from the dropped seed.

We enjoyed the thought of the abundance of milk here, after the dearth we had suffered in the South. Forty cows are milked for the use of the family and the negroes, and are under the care of seven women. The proprietor declared to me that he believed his slaves would drive him mad. Planters, who grow but one product, suffer much less from the incapacity and perverse will of their negroes: the care of stock is quite another matter; and for any responsible service, slaves are totally unfit.

Instead of living being cheaper on country estates, from the necessaries of life being raised on them, it appears to be much more expensive. This is partly owing to the prevailing pride of having negroes to show. One family, of four persons, of my acquaintance, in South Carolina, whose style of living might be called homely, cannot manage to live for less than three thousand dollars a year. They have a carriage and eleven negroes. It is cheaper in Kentucky. In the towns, a family may live in good style for two thousand five hundred dollars a year; and for no great deal more in the country. A family entered upon a good house, near a town, with one hundred and twenty acres of land, a few years ago, at a rent of three hundred dollars. They bought house and land, and brought their slaves, and now live, exclusive of rent and hire of servants, for two thousand dollars a year, in greater numbers and much higher style than the South Carolina family.

The prospects of agriculture in the States north-west of the Ohio are brilliant. The stranger who looks upon the fertile prairies of Illinois and Indiana, and the rich alluvions of Ohio, feels the iniquity of the English corn laws as strongly as in the alleys of Sheffield and Manchester. The inhuman perverseness of taxing food is there evident in all its enormity. The world ought never to hear of a want of food,—no one of the inhabitants of its civilised portions ought ever to be without the means of obtaining his fill, while the mighty western valley smiles in its fertility. If the aristocracy of England, for whom those laws were made, and by whom they are sustained, could be transported to travel, in open wagons, the boundless prairies, and the shores of the great rivers which would bring down the produce, they would groan to see from what their petty, selfish interests had shut out the thousands of half-starved labourers at home. If they could not be convinced of the very plain truth, of how their own fortunes would be benefited by allowing the supply and demand of food to take their natural course, they would, for the moment, wish their rent-rolls at the bottom of the sea, rather than that they should stand between the crowd of labourers and the supply of food which God has offered them. The landlords of England do not go and see the great western valley; but, happily, some of the labourers of England do. Far off as that valley is, those labourers will make themselves heard from thence, by those who have driven them there; and will teach the brethren whom they have left behind where the blame of their hunger lies. Every British settler who ploughs a furrow in the prairie, helps to plough up the foundations of the British Corn Laws.

There is a prospect, not very uncertain or remote, of these prairie lands bringing relief to a yet more suffering class than either English labourers or landlords; the sugar-growing slaves of the south. Rumours of the progress of sugar-making from beet in France have, for some time past, been interesting many persons in the United States; especially capitalists inclined to speculate, and the vigilant friends of the slave. Information has been obtained, and some trials made. Individuals have sown ten acres and upwards each, and manufactured sugar with a small apparatus. The result has been encouraging; and a large manufactory was to be opened in Philadelphia on the 1st of November last. Two large joint-stock companies have been founded, one in New Jersey and the other in Illinois. Their proceedings have been quickened by the frosts of several successive seasons, which have so cut off the canes in the south, as that it cannot supply one quarter of the domestic consumption: whereas it had previously supplied half. Some of the southern newspapers have recommended the substitution of beet for canes. However soon this may be done, the northern sugar planters, with their free labour, will surely overpower the south in the competition. This is on the supposition that beet will answer as well as canes; a supposition which will have Bern granted whenever the south begins to grow beet in preference to canes.

A heavy blow would be inflicted on slavery by the success of the beet companies. The condition of the cane-growing slaves cannot be made worse than it is. I believe that even in the West Indies it has never been so dreadful as at present in some parts of Louisiana. A planter stated to a sugar-refiner in New York, that it was found the best economy to work off the stock of negroes once in seven years.

The interest excited by this subject of beet-growing is very strong throughout the United States. Some result must ensue which will be an instigation to further action. The most important would be the inducing in the south either the use of free labour in sugar-growing, or the surrender of an object so fatal to decent humanity.

The prettiest amateur farm I saw was that of the late Dr. Hosack, at Hyde Park, on the Hudson. Dr. Hosack had spared no pains to improve his stock, and his methods of farming, as well as the beauty of his pleasure-grounds. His merits in the former departments the agricultural societies in England are much better qualified to appreciate than I; and they seem to have valued his exertions; to judge by the medals and other honourable testimonials from them which he showed to me. As for his pleasure-grounds, little was left for the hand of art to do. The natural terrace above the river, green, sweeping, and undulating, is surpassingly beautiful. Dr. Hosack's good taste led him to leave it alone, and to spend his pains on the gardens and conservatory behind. Of all the beautiful country-seats on the Hudson, none can, I think, equal Hyde Park; though many bear a more imposing appearance from the river.

Though I twice traversed the western part of the State of New York, I did not see the celebrated farm of Mr. Wadsworth; the finest, by all accounts, in the United States. The next best thing to seeing it was hearing Mr. Wadsworth talk about it,—especially of its hospitable capabilities. This only increased my regret at being unable to visit it.

The most remarkable order of land-owners that I saw in the United States was that of the Shakers and the Rappites; both holding all their property in common, and both enforcing celibacy. The interest which would be felt by the whole of society in watching the results of a community of property is utterly destroyed by the presence of the other distinction; or rather of the ignorance and superstition of which it is the sign.

The moral and economical principles of these societies ought to be most carefully distinguished by the observer. This being done, I believe it will be found that whatever they have peculiarly good among them is owing to the soundness of their economical principles; whatever they have that excites compassion, is owing to the badness of their moral arrangements.

I visited two Shaker communities in Massachusetts. The first was at Hancock, consisting of three hundred persons, in the neighbourhood of another at Lebanon, consisting of seven hundred persons. There are fifteen Shaker establishments or "families" in the United States, and their total number is between five and six thousand. There is no question of their entire success, as far as wealth is concerned. A very moderate amount of labour has secured to them in perfection all the comforts of life that they know how to enjoy, and as much wealth besides as would command the intellectual luxuries of which they do not dream. The earth does not show more flourishing fields, gardens, and orchards, than theirs. The houses are spacious, and in all respects unexceptionable. The finish of every external thing testifies to their wealth, both of material and leisure. The floor of their place of worship, (the scene of their peculiar exercises,) the roofs of their houses, their stair-carpets, the feet of their chairs, the springs of their gates, and their spitting-boxes,—for even these neat people have spitting-boxes—show a nicety which is rare in America. Their table fare is of the very best quality. We had depended on a luncheon among them, and were rather alarmed at the refusal we met, when we pleaded our long ride and the many hours that we should have to wait for refreshment, if they would not furnish us with some. They urged, reasonably enough, that a steady rule was necessary, subject as the community was to visits from the company at Lebanon Springs. They did not want to make money by furnishing refreshments, and did not desire the trouble. For once, however, they kindly gave way; and we were provided with delicious bread, molasses, butter, cheese and wine; all homemade, of course. If happiness lay in bread and butter, and such things, these people have attained the summum bonum. Their store shows what they can produce for sale. A great variety of simples, of which they sell large quantities to London; linen-drapery, knitted wares, sieves, baskets, boxes, and confectionary; palm and feather fans, pin-cushions, and other such trifles; all these may be had in some variety, and of the best quality. If such external provision, with a great amount of accumulated wealth besides, is the result of co-operation and community of property among an ignorant, conceited, inert society like this, what might not the same principles of association achieve among a more intelligent set of people, stimulated by education, and exhilarated by the enjoyment of all the blessings which Providence has placed within the reach of man?

The wealth of the Shakers is not to be attributed to their celibacy. They are receiving a perpetual accession to their numbers from among the "world's people," and these accessions are usually of the most unprofitable kind. Widows with large families of young children, are perpetually joining the community, with the view of obtaining a plentiful subsistence with very moderate labour. The increase of their numbers does not lead to the purchase of more land. They supply their enlarged wants by the high cultivation of the land they have long possessed; and the superfluity of capital is so great that it is difficult to conceive what will be done with it by a people so nearly dead to intellectual enjoyments. If there had been no celibacy among them, they would probably have been far more wealthy than they are; the expenses of living in community being so much less, and the produce of co-operative labour being so much greater than in a state of division into families. The truth of these last positions can be denied by none who have witnessed the working of a co-operative system. The problem is to find the principle by which all shall be induced to labour their share. Any such principle being found, the wealth of the community follows of course.

Whether any principle to this effect can be brought to bear upon any large class of society in the old world, is at present the most important dispute, perhaps, that is agitating society. It will never now rest till it has been made matter of experiment. If a very low principle has served the purpose, for a time at least, in the new world, there seems much ground for expectation that a far higher one may be found to work as well in the more complicated case of English society. There is, at least, every encouragement to try. While there are large classes of people here whose condition can hardly be made worse; while the present system (if such it may be called) imposes care on the rich, excessive anxiety on the middle classes, and desperation on the poor: while the powerful are thus, as it were, fated to oppress; the strivers after power to circumvent and counteract; and the powerless to injure, it seems only reasonable that some section, at least, of this warring population should make trial of the peaceful principles which are working successfully elsewhere. The co-operative methods of the Shakers and Rappites might be tried without any adoption of their spiritual pride and cruel superstition. These are so far from telling against the system, that they prompt the observer to remark how much has been done in spite of such obstacles.

There must be something sound in the principles on which these people differ from the rest of the world, or they would not work at all; but the little that is vital is dreadfully encumbered with that which is dead. Like all religious persuasions from which one differs, that of the Shakers appears more reasonable in conversation, and in their daily actions, than on paper and at a distance. In actual life, the absurd and peculiar recedes before the true and universal; but, I own, I have never witnessed more visible absurdity than in the way of life of the Shakers. The sound part of their principle is the same as that which has sustained all devotees; and with it is joined a spirit of fellowship which makes them more in the right than the anchorites and friars of old. This is all. Their spiritual pride, their insane vanity, their intellectual torpor, their mental grossness, are melancholy to witness. Reading is discouraged among them. Their thoughts are full of the one subject of celibacy: with what effect, may be easily imagined. Their religious exercises are disgustingly full of it. It cannot be otherwise: for they have no other interesting subject of thought beyond their daily routine of business; no objects in life, no wants, no hopes, no novelty of experience whatever. Their life is all dull work and no play.

The women, in their frightful costume, close opaque caps, and drab gowns of the last degree of tightness and scantiness, are nothing short of disgusting. They are averse to the open air and exercise; they are pallid and spiritless. They look far more forlorn and unnatural than the men. Their soulless stare at us, before their worship began, was almost as afflicting as that of the lowest order of slaves; and, when they danced, they were like so many galvanised corpses. I had been rather afraid of not being able to keep my countenance during this part of their worship; but there was no temptation to laugh. It was too shocking for ridicule. Three men stood up, shouting a monotonous tune, and dangling their crossed hands, with a pawing motion, to keep time, while the rest danced, except some old women and young children, who sat out. The men stamped, and the women jerked, with their arms hanging by their sides; they described perpetually the figure of a square; the men and boys on one side, the women and girls on the other. There were prayers besides, and singing, and a sermon. This last was of a better quality than usual, I understood. It was (of all improbable subjects) on religious liberty, and contained nothing outrageously uncommon, except the proposition that the American revolution had drawn the last of the teeth of the red dragon.

It is not to be supposed that the children who are carried in by their widowed, or indolent, or poor, or superstitious parents, are always acquiescent in their destination. I saw many a bright face within the prim cap-border, which bore a prophecy of a return to the world; and two of the boys stamped so vigorously in the dance, that it was impossible to imagine their feelings to be very devotional. The story of one often serves as an index to the hearts of many. I knew of a girl who was carried into a Shaker community by her widowed mother, and subjected early to its discipline. It was hateful to her. One Sunday, when she was, I believe, about sixteen, she feigned illness, to avoid going to worship. When she believed every one else gone, she jumped out of a low window, and upon the back of a pony which happened to be in the field. She rode round and round the enclosure, without saddle or bridle, and then re-entered the house. She had been observed, and was duly reprimanded. She left the community in utter weariness and disgust. A friend of mine, in a neighbouring village, took the girl into her service. She never settled well in service, being too proud for the occupation; and she actually went back to the same community, and is there still, for no better reason than the saving of her pride. Her old teachers had, it thus appeared, obtained an influence over her, notwithstanding the tyranny of their discipline; and it had not been of a wholesome moral nature. But no more words are necessary to show how pride, and all other selfishness, must flourish in a community which religiously banishes all the tenderest charities of life.

The followers of Mr. Rapp are settled at Economy, on the Ohio, eighteen miles below Pittsburgh. Their number was five hundred when I was there; and they owned three thousand acres of land. Much of their attention seems to be given to manufactures. They rear silkworms, and were the earliest silk-weavers in the United States. At my first visit they were weaving only a flimsy kind of silk handkerchief; last summer I brought away a piece of substantial, handsome black satin. They have sheep-walks, and a large woollen manufactory. Their factory was burnt down in 1834; the fire occasioning a loss of sixty thousand dollars; a mere trifle to this wealthy community. Their vineyards, corn-fields, orchards, and gardens gladden the eye. There is an abundance so much beyond their need that it is surprising that they work; except for want of something else to do. The Dutch love of flowers was visible in the plants that were to be seen in the windows, and the rich carnations and other sweets that bloomed in the garden and green-house. The whole place has a superior air to that of either of the Shaker "families" that I saw. The women were better dressed; more lively, less pallid; but, I fear, not much wiser. Mr. Rapp exercises an unbounded influence over his people. They are prevented learning any language but German, and are not allowed to converse with strangers. The superintendent keeps a close watch over them in this respect. Probationers must serve a year before they can be admitted: and the managers own that they dread the entrance of young people, who might be "unsettled;" that is, not sufficiently subservient.

I was curious to learn how five hundred persons could be kept in the necessary subjection by one. Mr. Rapp's means are such that his task is not very difficult. He keeps his people ignorant; and he makes them vain. He preaches to them their own superiority over the rest of the world so incessantly that they fully believe it; and are persuaded that their salvation is in his hands. At first I felt, with regard both to them and the Shakers, a strong respect for the self-conquest which could enable them to endure the singularity,—the one community, of its non-intercourse with strangers; the other, of its dancing exhibitions; but I soon found that my respect was misplaced. One and all, they glory in the singularity. They feel no awkwardness in it, from first to last. This vanity is the handle by which they are worked.

Mr. Rapp is now very old. His son is dead. It remains to be seen what will become of his community, with its immense accumulation of wealth, when it has lost its dictator. It does not appear that they can go on in their present state without a dictator. They smile superciliously upon Mr. Owen's plan, as admitting "a wrong principle,"—marriage. The best hope for them is that they will change their minds on this point, admitting the educational improvements which will arise out of the change, and remaining in community with regard to property. This is the process now in action among the seceders from their body, settled on the opposite bank of the river, a short distance below Economy.

These seceders were beguiled by Count Leon, a stranger, who told the people a great deal that was true about Mr. Rapp, and a great deal that was false about himself. It is a great pity that Count Leon was a swindler; for he certainly opened the eyes of the Economy people to many truths, and might have done all that was wanted, if he had himself been honest. He drew away seventy of the people, and instigated them to demand of Mr. Rapp their share of the accumulated property. It was refused: and a suit was instituted against Mr. Rapp, in whose name the whole is invested. The lawyers compromised the affair, and Mr. Rapp disbursed 120,000 dollars. Count Leon obtained, and absconded with almost the whole, and died in Texas; the burial-place of many more such men. With the remnant of their funds, the seventy seceders purchased land, and settled themselves opposite to Beaver, on the Ohio. They live in community, but abjuring celibacy; and have been joined by some thorough-bred Americans. It will be seen how they prosper.

Though the members of these remarkable communities are far from being the only agriculturists in whom the functions of proprietor and labourer are joined, the junction is in them so peculiar as to make them a separate class, holding a place between the landowners of whom I have before spoken, and the labourers of whom I shall have to treat.

SECTION I. DISPOSAL OF LAND.

The political economists of England have long wondered why the Americans have not done what older nations would be glad to do, if the opportunity had not gone by;—reserved government lands, which, as it is the tendency of rent to rise, might obviate any future increase of taxation. There are more good reasons than one why this cannot be done in America.

The expenses of the general government are so small that the present difficulty is to reduce the taxation so as to leave no more than a safe surplus revenue in the treasury; and there is no prospect of any increase of taxation; as the taxpayers are likely to grow much faster than the expenses of the government.

The people of the United States choose to be proprietors of land, not tenants. No one can yet foresee the time when the relation of landlord and tenant (except in regard to house property) will be extensively established in America. More than a billion of acres remain to be disposed of first.

The weightiest reason of all is that, in the United States, the people of to-day are the government of to-day; the people of fifty years hence will be the government of fifty years hence; and it would not suit the people of to-day to sequestrate their property for the benefit of their successors, any better than it would suit the people of fifty years hence to be legislated for by those of to-day. A democratic government must always be left free to be operated upon by the will of the majority of the time being. All that the government of the day can do is to ascertain what now appears to be the best principle by which to regulate the disposal of land, and then to let the demand and supply take their natural course.

The methods according to which the disposal of land is carried on are as good as the methods of government almost invariably are in America. The deficiency is in the knowledge of the relation which land bears to other capital and to labour.[14] A few clear-headed men have foreseen the evil of so great a dispersion of the people as has taken place, and have consistently advocated a higher price being set upon land than that at which it is at present sold. Such men are now convinced that evils which seem to bear no more relation to the price of land than the fall of an apple to the motions of the planets, are attributable to the reduction in the price of government lots: that much political blundering, and religious animosity; much of the illegal violence, and much of the popular apathy on the slave question, which have disgraced the country, are owing to the public lands being sold at a minimum price of a dollar and a-quarter per acre. Many excellent leaders of the democratic party think the people at large less fit to govern themselves wisely than they were five-and-twenty years ago. This seems to me improbable; but I believe there is no doubt that the dispersion has hitherto been too great; and that the intellectual and moral, and, of course, the political condition of the people has thereby suffered.

The price of the public lands was formerly two dollars per acre, with credit. It was found to be a bad plan for the constituents of a government to be its debtors; and there was a reduction of the price to a dollar and a quarter, without credit. In forty years, above forty millions of acres have been sold. The government cannot arbitrarily raise the price. If any check is given to the process of dispersion, it must arise from the people perceiving the true state of their own case, and acting accordingly.

Some circumstances seem at present to favour the process of enlightenment; others are adverse to it. Those which are favourable are, the high prosperity of manufactures and commerce, the essential requisite of which is the concentration of labourers: the increasing immigration of labourers from Europe, and the happy experience which they force upon the back settler of the advantage of an increased proportion of labour to land; and the approaching crisis of the slavery question; when every one will see the necessity of measures which will keep the slaves where they are. Of the extraordinary, and I must think, often wilful error of taking for granted that all the slaves must be removed, in order to the abolition of slavery, I shall have to speak elsewhere.

The circumstances unfavourable to an understanding of the true state of the case about the disposal of land are, the deep-rooted persuasion that land itself is the most valuable wealth, in all places, and under all circumstances: and the complication of interests connected with the late acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and the present usurpation of Texas.

Louisiana was obtained from the French, not on account of the fertile new land which it comprehended, but because it was essential to the very existence of the United States that the mouth of the Mississippi should not be in the possession of another people. The Americans obtained the mouth of the Mississippi; and with it, unfortunately, large tracts of the richest virgin soil, on which slavery started into new life, and on which "the perspiration of the eastern States" (as I have heard the settlers of the west called) rested, and grew barbarous while they grew rich. A fact has lately transpired in the northern States which was already well known in the south,—that the purchase of Florida was effected for the sake of the slave-holders. It is now known that the President was overwhelmed with letters from slave-owners, complaining that Florida was the refuge of their runaways; and demanding that this retreat should be put within their power. Florida was purchased. Many and great evils have already arisen out of its acquisition. To cover these, and blind the people to the particular and iniquitous interests engaged in the affair, the sordid faction benefited raises a perpetual boast in the ears of the people about their gain of new territory, and the glory and profit of having added so many square miles to their already vast possessions.

In the eyes of those of the people who do not yet see the whole case, the only evil which has arisen out of the possession of Florida, is the Seminole warfare. They breathe an intense hatred against the Seminole Indians; and many fine young men have gone down into Florida, and lost their lives in battle, without being aware that they were fighting for oppressors against the oppressed. Probably few of the United States troops who fell in the late Seminole war knew how the strife arose. According to the laws of the slave States, the children of the slaves follow the fortunes of the mother. It will be seen, at a glance, what consequences follow from this; how it operates as a premium upon licentiousness among white men; how it prevents any but mock marriages among slaves; and also what effect it must have upon any Indians with whom slave women have taken refuge. The late Seminole war arose out of this law. The escaped slaves had intermarried with the Indians. The masters claimed the children. The Seminole fathers would not deliver them up. Force was used to tear the children from their parents' arms, and the Indians began their desperate, but very natural work of extermination. They have carried on the war with eminent success, St. Augustine, the capital, being now the only place in Florida where the whites can set their foot. Of course, the poor Indians will ultimately succumb, however long they may maintain the struggle: but, before that, the American people may possibly have learned enough of the facts of the case to silence those who boast of the acquisition of Florida, as an increase of the national glory.

It would be a happy thing for them if they should know all soon enough to direct their national reprobation upon the Texan adventurers, and wash their hands of the iniquity of that business. This would soon be done, if they could look upon the whole affair from a distance, and see how the fair fame of their country is compromised by the avarice and craft of a faction. The probity of their people, their magnanimity in money matters, have always been conspicuous, from the time of the cession of their lands by the States to the General Government, till now: and, now they seem in danger of forfeiting their high character through the art of the few, and the ignorance of the many. The few are obtaining their end by flattering the passion of the many for new territory, as well as by engaging their best feelings on behalf of those who are supposed to be fighting for their rights against oppressors. There is yet hope. The knowledge of the real state of the case is spreading; and, if only time can be gained, the Americans will yet be saved from the eternal disgrace of adding Texas to their honourable Union.

The brief account which I shall give of what is prematurely called the acquisition of Texas, is grounded partly on historical facts, open to the knowledge of all; and partly on what I had the opportunity of learning at New Orleans, from some leaders and agents in the Texan cause, who did what they could to enlist my judgment and sympathies on behalf of their party. I went in entire ignorance of the whole matter. My first knowledge of it was derived from the persons above-mentioned, whose objects were to obtain the good-will of such English as they could win over; to have their affairs well spoken of in London; and to get the tide of respectable English emigration turned in their direction. With me they did not succeed: with some others they did. Several English are already buried in Texas; and there are others whose repentance that they ever were beguiled into aiding such a cause will be far worse than death. The more I heard of the case from the lips of its advocates, the worse I thought of it: and my reprobation of the whole scheme has grown with every fact which has come out since.

Texas, late a province of Mexico, and then one of its confederated States, lies adjacent to Louisiana. The old Spanish government seem to have had some foresight as to what might happen, to judge by the jealousy with which they guarded this part of their country from intrusion by the Americans. The Spanish Captain-general of the internal provinces, Don Nemisio Salcedo, used to say that he would, if he could, stop the birds from flying over the boundary between Texas and the United States. Prior to 1820, however, a few adventurers, chiefly Indian traders, had dropped over the boundary line and remained unmolested in the eastern corner of Texas. In 1820, Moses Austin, of Missouri, was privileged by the Spanish authorities to introduce three hundred orderly, industrious families, professing the Catholic religion, as settlers into Texas. Moses Austin died; and his son Stephen prosecuted the scheme. Before possession of the land was obtained, the Mexican Revolution occurred; but the new government confirmed the privilege granted by the old one, with some modifications. The chief of the settlers and his followers were liberally enriched with lands, gratis; on the conditions of their occupying them; of their professing the Catholic religion; and of their being obedient to the laws of the country.

Other persons were tempted by Austin's success to apply for grants. Many obtained them, and disposed of their grants to joint stock companies; so that Texas became the scene of much land-speculation. The companies began to be busy about "stock" and "scrip," which they proffered as preparatory titles to land; and a crowd of ignorant and credulous persons, and of gamblers, thus became greedy after lands which no more belonged to any Americans than Ireland.

Leave was given to the actual settlers by the Mexican Government to introduce, for ten years, duty free, all articles, not contraband, that were necessary for their use and comfort. Under this permission, much smuggling went on: and many adventurers settled in Texas for the very purpose of supplying the neighbouring Indian tribes with contraband articles. Arms and ammunition were plentifully furnished to the savages; and slaves to the settlers; though slavery had been abolished in the country, by whose laws the settlers had engaged to live.

The next step was, an offer on the part of the United States Government to purchase Texas, in order to incorporate it with the Union. The offer was instantly and indignantly rejected by the Mexicans. It may seem surprising that even with the passion for territory that the people of the United States have, they should desire to purchase Texas, while above a billion of acres of land at home were still unoccupied. Slavery is found to be the solution of this, as of almost every other absurdity and unpleasant mystery there. Slavery answers only on a virgin soil, and under certain conditions of the supply of labour. It is destined to die out of the States which it has impoverished, and which come most closely into contrast with those which are flourishing under free labour. It is evidently destined soon to be relinquished by Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware; and not very long afterwards, by the Carolinas, and perhaps Tennessee. The proprietors of slaves have a double purpose in acquiring new territory: to obtain a fresh field for the labour of the slaves they possess; and, (what is at least as important,) to keep up the equality of the representation of the slave and free States in Congress. We have before seen that there is a provision against the introduction of slavery into the lands north-west of the Ohio. When to the representation of the new States of this region, shall be joined that of the old States which relinquish slavery, the remaining slave States will be in a hopeless minority in Congress, unless a representation from new slave regions can be provided. Texas is to be obtained first; and, if desirable, to be divided into several States; and afterwards, the aggressions on the Mexican territory will doubtless be repeated, as often as a new area for slave labour is wanted; and an accession of representation, for the support of slavery, is needed in Congress. Thus it happens that a host of land-speculators, adventurers and slave-owners have, for a long series of years, been interested in the acquisition of Texas.

On the refusal of the Mexican Government to sell Texas, the newspapers of the slave-holding portion of the United States began to indicate methods of obtaining the territory, and to advocate the use of any means for so desirable an object. The agent of the United States at the Mexican capital is believed to have been instigated by his government to intrigue for the purpose which could not be obtained by negotiation. The settlers in Texas made it known along the Mississippi that they might soon be strong enough to establish slavery openly, in defiance of Mexico. This brought in an accession of slave-holding settlers, who evaded the Mexican laws, by calling their slaves "apprentices for ninety-nine years." The Mexicans took alarm; decreed in the State Legislature of Texas that no apprenticeship should, on any pretence, be for a longer term than ten years; forbade further immigration from the United States; and sent a small body of troops to enforce the prohibition. This was in 1829 and 1830.

In 1832, the Mexican troops were unfortunately wanted near the capital, and called in from the frontiers and colonies. The settlers shut up the custom-houses in their part of the country, and defied the laws as much as they pleased. Then a great number of restless, bad spirits began to pour into Texas from the whole of the United States; men who had to fly from their creditors, or from the pursuit of justice. There was probably never seen a more ferocious company of ruffians than Texas contains at this moment. These men, who had nothing to lose, now set to work to wrench the territory from the hands of the Mexicans. They actually proceeded, in 1833, to organize a State Government; opposed earnestly but feebly by the honest, original settlers, who were satisfied with the contract under which they had settled, and had everything to lose by the breach of it. A Convention was called, to prepare a State Constitution, which Stephen Austin had the audacity to carry to the Mexican capital, to pray for its ratification by the Mexican Congress. After some time, he was committed to prison on a charge of treasonable conspiracy. He was still in prison when I was at New Orleans, in May, 1835; and no one of the persons who conversed with me on Texan affairs alluded to the fact. They spoke of him as if living and acting among the settlers. He wrote to the colonists from his prison, advising strict obedience to the Mexican laws; and, finally, gave his promise to the government to promote order in the colonies; and was dismissed, by the clemency of the administration, without further punishment than an imprisonment of nearly two years.

The wilder adventurers among the settlers had chafed at his advice, but found it necessary to be quiet for a time. The Mexican government put too much trust in them on this account, and restored, during Austin's imprisonment, the freedom of immigration, on the old conditions. The liberty was again shamelessly abused. Slaves were imported from Africa, via Cuba, and illegal land speculations were carried on with more vigour than ever. Troops were again sent from the capital to re-open the custom-houses, and enforce their regulations. But it was now too late.

It had long been a settled agreement between the Texan adventurers and many slave-holders of the south, that if slavery could no otherwise be perpetuated in Texas, it should be done by the seizure of that province; all possible aid being given by the residents in the United States, who were a party to the agreement. This was avowed by the adventurers in Texas; and the avowal has been justified by the subscriptions of money, arms, and stores, which have been sent through New Orleans; the companies of volunteers that have given their strength to the bad cause; and the efforts of members of Congress from the south to hurry on the recognition of the independence of Texas by the United States Government. It was with shame and grief that I heard, while I was in New York, last spring, of the public meeting there, which had been got up by men who should have put the influence of their names to a better use,—a public meeting in behalf of the Texan adventurers, where high-sounding common-places had been played off about patriotism, fighting for the dearest rights of man, and so forth. The purpose was, I believe, answered for the time. The price of stock rose; and subscriptions were obtained. The Texan cause was then in the lowest state of depression. It soon revived, in consequence of an unfortunate defeat of the Mexicans, and the capture of the President of their republic, Santa Anna. This, again, was made to serve as the occasion of a public dinner at New York, when some eminent members of Congress were passing through, to the Springs, in the summer. The time will come when those gentlemen will look back upon their speeches at that dinner as among the deeds which, dying, they would most wish to blot. By this time, however, the true character of the struggle was beginning to be extensively recognised: and, day by day, the people of the United States have been since awakening to the knowledge of how they have been cheated in having their best sympathies called forth in behalf of the worst of causes. The great fear is, lest this should prove to be too late; lest, the United States having furnished the means by which the usurpation of Texas has been achieved, the people of the Union should be persuaded that they must follow their common, and otherwise fair rule, of acknowledging the independence of all States that are de facto independent, without having anything to do with the question de jure.

What has been the national conduct of the United States on this great question? The government has been very nearly impartial. It must be allowed that factions and individuals were already doing so much that, if the government wished all possible success to the Texans, it could hardly do better than be quiet while they were receiving the aid of its constituents. While the theft of Texas has been achieved, (if it be achieved,) by United States men, money and arms, the general government has been officially regarding it as ostensibly and actually a foreign affair. However much may be true of the general belief in the interest of its members in the success of the Texan aggression, the government has preserved a cool and guarded tone throughout; and the only act that I know of for which it can be blamed is for not removing General Gaines from his command on the frontier, on his manifestation of partisanship on the Texan side. General Gaines was ordered to protect the settlers on the south-western frontier, who might be in danger from the Mexicans, and from the fierce Indians who were engaged on the Mexican side of the quarrel. General Gaines wrote to head quarters of his intentions of crossing, to attack the Mexicans, not only the inner bounds of the United States territory, but the disputed boundary, claimed by the United States, and disallowed by Mexico. Immediate orders were despatched to him to do no such thing; to confine himself, except in a strong emergency, to the inner boundary; and on no account whatever to cross the disputed line. This was not enough. An officer who had shown himself so indisposed to the neutrality professed by his government, should have been sent where he could indulge his partialities with less hazard to the national honour.

Some senators from the south pressed, last session, with indecent haste, for the recognition of the independence of Texas. The speech of Ex-President Adams remains as an eternal rebuke to such.[15] This speech was the most remarkable individual act of the session; and no session has been distinguished by one more honourable. There was no attempt at a reply to it, in or out of either House. Mr. Adams left no resource to the advocates of the Texan cause but abuse of himself: the philosophy of which he, no doubt, understood as well as other people. Various public men, in various public assemblies, have declared their desire for the success of the Texans; and have joined with this the avowal that the value of slaves will rise fifty per cent, as soon as the independence of Texas is acknowledged.

The war is not yet over. The vicissitudes have been so great,—each party has appeared at times in so hopeless a condition, that the friends of American honour, and the foes of slavery, do not yet despair of the ultimate expulsion of the aggressors, and the restoration of Texas to Mexico. If these hopes must be surrendered,—if slavery is to be re-established on a constitutional basis, in a vast territory where it had been actually abolished,—if a new impulse is thus to be given to the traffic in native Africans,[16]—if the fair fame of the Anglo-Americans is to be thus early, and thus deeply stained, good men must rouse themselves the more to enlighten the ignorance through which the misfortune has happened. They must labour to exhibit the truth, keeping unshaken their faith in the theory of their constitution that "the majority will be in the right."

It is much to be feared that, even if Texas were acknowledged to-morrow to be a Mexican State, an injury would be found to have been done to the American people, which it will take a long time and much experience to repair. No pains have been spared to confirm the delusion, that the possession of more and more land is the only thing to be desired, alike by the selfish and the patriotic; by those who would hastily build up their own fortunes, and by those who desire the aggrandisement of their country. No one mourned with me more earnestly over this popular delusion than a member of Congress, who has since been one of the most vehement advocates of the Texan cause, and has thereby done his best to foster the delusion. He told me that the metaphysics of society in the south afford a curious study to the observer; and that they are humbling to a resident. He told me that, so far from the honour and happiness of any region being supposed to lie in the pursuit of the higher objects of life, any man would be pronounced "imbecile" who, having enough for his moderate wants, should prefer the enjoyment of his patrimony, his family relations, and intercourse with the society in which he was brought up, to wandering away in pursuit of more land. He complained that he was heart-sick when he heard of American books: that there was no character of permanence in anything;—all was fluctuation, except the passion for land, which, under the name of enterprise, or patriotism; or something else that was creditable, would last till his countrymen had pushed their out-posts to the Pacific. He insisted that the only consolation arose from what was to be hoped when pioneering must, perforce, come to a stop. He told me of one and another of his intelligent and pleasant young neighbours, who were quitting their homes and civilised life, and carrying their brides "as bondwomen" into the wilderness, because fine land was cheap there. If all this be true of the young gentry of the south, as I believe it is, what hope is there that the delusion will not long remain among those who have no other guides than Experience;—that slowest of all teachers?

The people of the United States have, however, kept their eyes open to one great danger, arising from this love of land. They have always had in view the disadvantage of rich men purchasing tracts larger than they could cultivate. They saw that it was contrary to the public interest that individuals should be allowed to interpose a desert between other settlers whose welfare depends much on their having means of free communication, and a peopled neighbourhood; and that it is inconsistent with republican modes that overgrown fortunes should arise by means of an early grasping of large quantities of a cheap kind of property, which must inevitably become of the highest value in course of time. The reduction in the price of land would probably have been greater, but for the temptation which the cheapening would hold out to capitalists. Another reason assigned for not still further lowering the price is, the danger of depreciating a kind of property held by the largest proportion of the people. This is obviously unsound; since the property held by this large proportion of the people is improved land, whose relation in value to other kinds of property is determined by quite other circumstances than the amount of the original purchase-money. The number of people who sell again unimproved land is so small as not to be worthy to enter into the account.

Large grants of land have been made to schools and colleges. Upwards of eight millions of acres have, I believe, been thus disposed of. There seems no objection to this, at the time it was done; as there can be no doubt that grants will be cultivated that have such an interest hanging on their cultivation. These grants were made while there was a national debt. Now, there is a surplus revenue; and appropriations of this kind had better be made henceforth from the money which has arisen from the sale of land than in a way which would force more land into the market. It is to be hoped, too, that no more recompenses for public service will be offered in land, like the large grants which were made to soldiers after the revolutionary war. The soldiers have disposed of their lands much under the governmental price, in order to obtain a sale; and the hurtful dispersion of settlers, and the sale of tracts too large to be well-cultivated, have been thereby assisted.

The great question incessantly repeated throughout the United States is, what is to be done with the immense amount of land remaining unsold; and with the perpetually increasing revenue arising from the sale, as it proceeds? Various propositions are afloat,—none of which appear to me so wise as some which remain to be offered. One proposition is to divide the lands again among the States, apportioning the amount according to the representation in Congress, or to the population as given by the last census. Besides the difficulty of making the apportionment fairly, this plan would afford fatal inducements to a greater dispersion of people than has yet taken place. It is also argued that no constitutional power exists by which the cession of 1787 can be reversed.

Another proposition is, to let the sale of lands go on as it does now, and divide the proceeds among the several States, for purposes of Education, Colonisation of the coloured race, and Internal Improvements. Under such a plan, there would be endless disputes about the amounts to be paid over to the different States. The general government would have a new and dangerous function assigned to it. Besides, as much of the surplus revenue is derived from duties, it seems a shorter and more natural method to leave off levying money that is not wanted, than to levy it, use it, and make a distribution of other funds among the States. This subject will, however, come under consideration hereafter.

Others propose that nothing should be done: that the lands should go on being sold according to the present demand, and the proceeds to accumulate, till some accident happens,—a war, or other expensive adventure,—to help to dissipate them. The first part of the proposition will probably stand good: for it seems a difficult thing to raise the price of land again:—an impossible thing, till the people shall show that they understand the case by demanding an increase of price: but the second part of the proposition cannot be acceded to. It is inconsistent with the first principles of democracy that large sums of money should accumulate in the hands of the general government. The accumulation must be disposed of, and the sources of revenue restrained.

There are modes of advantageously disposing of the surplus revenue which are obvious to those whose economical experience is precisely the reverse of that of the people of the United States. They are not likely to be at present assented to,—perhaps even to be tolerated by the inhabitants of the new world. Such as they are, they will be presented in the next section.

The lowest price given of late for land, that I heard of, was a quarter-dollar per acre; (for these are not times when three thousand acres are to be had for a rifle; and a whole promontory for a suit of clothes.) Some good land may be still had, at a distance from roads and markets, from those who want to turn their surplus land into money, for a quarter-dollar per acre. Some that I saw in New Hampshire under these circumstances has advanced in five years to a dollar and a half per acre: and some of about equal quality, about fifteen miles nearer to a market, sold at the same time for ten dollars per acre. I saw some low land, on the banks of the river, near Pittsburg, which would not sell at any price a few years ago, when salt was brought over the mountains on pack-horses, and sold at a dollar a quart. Now salt is obtained in any quantity by digging near this land; and the meadow is parted into lots of ten acres each, which sell at the rate of one thousand dollars per acre. This is, no doubt, in prospect of the salt-works which are destined to flourish here. The highest price I heard of being given (unless in a similar case in New York) was for street lots in Mobile; one hundred and ten dollars per foot frontage.

For agricultural purposes, the price of land varies, according to its fertility, and, much more, to its vicinity to a market, in a manner which cannot easily be specified. I think the highest price I heard of was fifteen hundred dollars per acre. This was in the south. In the north and west, I heard of prices varying from thirty to one hundred dollars, even in somewhat retired situations. One thing seems to be granted on all hands: that a settler cannot fail of success, if he takes good land, in a healthy situation, at the government price. If he bestows moderate pains on his lot, he may confidently reckon on its being worth at least double at the end of the year: much more, if there are growing probabilities of a market.

The methods according to which the sales of the public lands in the United States are conducted are excellent. The lots are so divided as to preclude all doubt and litigation about boundaries. There is a general land-office at Washington, and a subordinate one in each district, where all business can be transacted with readiness and exactitude. Periodical sales are made of lands which it is desirable to bring into the market. These are disposed of to the highest bidder. The advance of the population into the wilderness is thus made more regular than it would be if there were not a rendezvous in each district, where it could be ascertained how the settlement of the neighbouring country was going on; titles are made more secure; and less impunity is allowed to fraud.

The pre-emption laws, originally designed for the benefit of poor settlers, have been the greatest provocatives to fraud. It seemed hard that a squatter, who had settled himself on unoccupied land, and done it nothing but good, should be turned off without remuneration, or compelled to purchase his own improvements; and in 1830, a bill was therefore passed, granting a pre-emption right to squatters who had taken such possession of unsold lands. It provided that when two individuals had cultivated a quarter section of land, (one hundred and sixty acres,) each should have a pre-emption right with regard to half the cultivated portion: and each also to a pre-emption of eighty acres anywhere else in the same land district. Of course, abundance of persons took advantage of this law to get the best land very cheap. Two men, by merely cutting down, or blazing a few trees, or "camping out" for a night or two, on a good quarter-section, have secured it at the minimum price. A Report to Congress states that there is reason to believe that "large companies have been founded, who procure affidavits of improvements to be made, get the warrants issued upon them, and whenever a good tract of land is ready for sale, cover it over with their floats, (warrants of the required habitation,) and thus put down competition. The frauds upon the public, within the past year, (1835,) from this single source, have arisen to many millions of dollars." Such errors in matters of detail are sure to be corrected soon after being discovered. The means will speedily be found of showing a due regard to the claims of squatters, without precipitating the settlement of land by unfairly reducing its price in the market. Whatever methods may tend to lessen rather than to increase the facilities for occupying new land, must, on the whole, be an advantage, while the disproportion between land and labour is so great as it now is in the western regions of the United States.

SECTION II. RURAL LABOUR.

English farmers settling in the United States used to be a joke to their native neighbours. The Englishman began with laughing, or being shocked, at the slovenly methods of cultivation employed by the American settlers: he was next seen to look grave on his own account; and ended by following the American plan.

The American ploughs round the stumps of the trees he has felled, and is not very careful to measure the area he ploughs, and the seed he sows. The Englishman clears half the quantity of land,—clears it very thoroughly; ploughs deep, sows thick, raises twice the quantity of grain on half the area of land, and points proudly to his crop. But the American has, meantime, fenced, cleared, and sown more land, improved his house and stock, and kept his money in his pocket. The Englishman has paid for the labour bestowed on his beautiful fields more than his fine crop repays him. When he has done thus for a few seasons, till his money is gone, he learns that he has got to a place where it answers to spend land to save labour; the reverse of his experience in England; and he soon becomes as slovenly a farmer as the American, and begins immediately to grow rich.

It would puzzle a philosopher to compute how long some prejudices will subsist in defiance of, not only evidence, but personal experience. These same Americans, who laugh (reasonably enough) at the prejudiced English farmer, seem themselves incapable of being convinced on a point quite as plain as that between him and themselves. The very ground of their triumph over him is their knowledge of the much smaller value of land, and greater value of labour, in America than in England: and yet there is no one subject on which so many complaints are to be heard from every class of American society as the immigration of foreigners. The incapacity of men to recognise blessings in disguise has been the theme of moralists in all ages: but it might be expected that the Americans, in this case, would be an exception. It is wonderful, to a stranger, to see how they fret and toil, and scheme and invent, to supply the deficiency of help, and all the time quarrel with the one means by which labour is brought to their door. The immigration of foreigners was the one complaint by which I was met in every corner of the free States; and I really believe I did not converse with a dozen persons who saw the ultimate good through the present apparent evil.

It is not much to be wondered at that gentlemen and ladies, living in Boston and New York, and seeing, for the first time in their lives, half-naked and squalid persons in the street, should ask where they come from, and fear lest they should infect others with their squalor, and wish they would keep away. It is not much to be wondered at that the managers of charitable institutions in the maritime cities should be weary of the claims advanced by indigent foreigners: but it is surprising that these gentlemen and ladies should not learn by experience that all this ends well, and that matters are taking their natural course. It would certainly be better that the emigrants should be well clothed, educated, respectable people; (except that, in that case, they would probably never arrive;) but the blame of their bad condition rests elsewhere, while their arrival is, generally speaking, almost a pure benefit. Some are intemperate and profligate; and such are, no doubt, a great injury to the cities where they harbour; but the greater number show themselves decent and hardworking enough, when put into employment. Every American acknowledges that few or no canals or railroads would be in existence now, in the United States, but for the Irish labour by which they have been completed: and the best cultivation that is to be seen in the land is owing to the Dutch and Germans it contains. What would housekeepers do for domestic service without foreigners? If the American ports had been barred against immigration, and the sixty thousand foreigners per annum, with all their progeny, had been excluded, where would now have been the public works of the United States, the agriculture, the shipping?

The most emphatic complainers of the immigration of foreigners are those who imagine that the morals of society suffer thereby. My own conviction is that the morals of society are, on the whole, thereby much improved. It is candidly allowed, on all hands, that the passion of the Irish for the education of their children is a great set-off against the bad qualities some of them exhibit in their own persons; and that the second and third generations of Irish are among the most valuable citizens of the republic. The immigrant Germans are more sober and respectable than the Irish; but there is more difficulty in improving them and their children. The Scotch are in high esteem. My own opinion is that most of the evils charged upon the immigrants are chargeable upon the mismanagement of them in the ports. The atrocious corruption of the New York elections, where an Irishman, just landed, and employed upon the drains, perjures himself, and votes nine times over, is chargeable, not upon immigration, nor yet upon universal suffrage, but upon faults in the machinery of registration. Again, if the great pauper-palace, over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, be half full of foreigners; if it be true that an Irish woman was seen to walk round it, and heard to observe that she should immediately write over for all her relations; the evil is chargeable upon there being a pauper-palace, with the best of food and clothing, and no compulsion to work, in a country where there is far more work and wages than there are hands to labour and earn. There is in New York a benevolent gentleman who exercises a most useful and effectual charity. He keeps a kind of registry office for the demand and supply of emigrant labour; takes charge of the funds of such emigrants as are fortunate enough to have any; and befriends them in every way. He declares that he has an average of six situations on his list ready for every sober, able-bodied man and woman that lands at New York.

The bad moral consequences of a dispersion of agricultural labour, and the good moral effects of an adequate combination, are so serious as to render it the duty of good citizens to inform themselves fully of the bearings of this question before they attempt to influence other minds upon it. Those who have seen what are the morals and manners of families who live alone in the wilds, with no human opinion around them, no neighbours with whom to exchange good offices, no stimulus to mental activity, no social amusements, no church, no life, nothing but the pursuit of the outward means of living,—any one who has witnessed this will be ready to agree what a blessing it would be to such a family to shake down a shower of even poor Irish labourers around them. To such a family no tidings ought to be more welcome than of the arrival of ship-load after ship-load of immigrants at the ports, some few of whom may wander hitherwards, and by entering into a combination of labour to obtain means of living, open a way to the attainment of the ends. Sixty thousand immigrants a-year! What are these spread over so many thousand square miles? If the country could be looked down upon from a balloon, some large clusters of these would be seen detained in the cities, because they could not be spared into the country; other clusters would be seen about the canals and railroads; and a very slight sprinkling in the back country, where their stations would be marked by the prosperity growing up around them.

The expedients used in the country settlements to secure a combination of labour when it is absolutely necessary, show how eminently deficient it is. Every one has heard of the "frolic" or "bee," by means of which the clearing of lots, the raising of houses, the harvesting of crops is achieved. Roads are made, and kept by contributions of labour and teams, by settlers. For the rest, what can be done by family labour alone is so done, with great waste of time, material, and toil. The wonderful effects of a "frolic," in every way, should serve, in contrast with the toil and difficulty usually expended in producing small results, to incline the hearts of settlers towards immigrants, and to plan how an increase of them may be obtained.

Minds are, I hope, beginning to turn in this direction. In New England, where there is the most combination of labour, and the poorest land, it is amusing to see the beginning of discoveries on this head. I find, in the United States' Almanack for 1835, an article on agricultural improvements, (presupposing a supply of labour as the primary requisite,) which bears all the marks of freshness and originality, of having been a discovery of the writer's.