"My Dear Sir
"I have recd. your letter, respecting the two acceptances. I had thought they were both provided for. As the Boat goes to-morrow, and as I returned to London only last evening, I may not be able to arrange so as to write by this opportunity; but by the very next, I will cause you to hear from me. We have been about six weeks, having run over much of England, & something of Scotland. Of course we could stay but little time in any one place, nor were we able to see much below the surface of things. But the agriculture, and the general of things, in England & Scotland, I have looked at, pretty attentively. Taken together, England exhibits a high wrought, exact, elaborate system of art & industry. Every productive power is carried to the utmost extent of skill, & maintained in the most unceasing activity. Constant attention & close calculation pervade everything. Rent is high, but prices of produce are high also. About thirty shillings, Sterling, say seven dollars, or thereabouts, may be regarded, perhaps, as near the average rent of good land in England. In some parts, it is much higher, say ten dollars, or, rent & tithes together, perhaps fifteen. The land is vastly productive, & prices are high. A gentleman told me yesterday that he had sold, some weeks ago, his wheat crop, at eleven pounds Sterling, pr acre, standing, & his oat crop for eight. This will shew you the aggregate of product & price. Forty bushels of wheat, & fifty or even sixty of oats, are not an uncommon yield to the acre. The land is naturally good, & is made the subject of the most careful & skilful cultivation. In the course of forty years, the turnip has vastly enriched England. It feeds millions of sheep, whose wool & flesh command high prices, & the feeding of which in the field, during the winter, say ten sheep to the acre, enriches the land, for the succeeding crop of wheat. Then, too, lime is used extensively, & every bone ground up, for bone dust, which is found a most powerful manure. And when the lands require it, a complete system of underground draining is practised, especially in Scotland, which produces the best effects. Agricultural labor is not more than half as dear in England, as in the U. S.
"(I shall add a P.S. if I learn anything before this P. M. of this matter of the U. S. Bank & Hottinguer.
"(4 P. M. Mr. Jaudon has been to Paris. Rothschilds have accepted the Bills of the Bk. U. S. for the honor of the Bank. It is thought the Bank may have drawn, under an understanding with Hottinguer's agt. in U. S. of which his principals were not seasonably advised. It is an unlucky affair, at least, & will much prejudice American interests and credits here."
D. Webster.
Here are Mr. Webster's minutes of his famous conversation with Mr. Jefferson when he visited him in December, 1824. They were afterward published in full from these memoranda. They are written on two pages of a very small sheet of note-paper. But they contain, among other things, a graphic portrait of Patrick Henry, his tribute to Sam Adams as more than any other man the author of Revolutionary measures; to John Adams as the colossus of the great debate of liberty which preceded the Declaration of Independence; Mr. Jay's authorship of the Address to the People of England, one of the four greatest state papers in our history; of the fact that Richard Henry Lee came near being a stamp-master, and the fact that Virginia and the New England States always acted together and carried through the Revolution, picking up a few other votes where they could:
Next comes a letter from Lord Ashburton, written from London, June 18, 1852, interesting for the confession of that sincere and candid Englishman, that he did not pretend to be a free-trader for America. If many of our English advisers, and many Americans who have been prone to take their advice, had been as sensible as Lord Ashburton, it would have been much better for all concerned. This letter, as some others of Ashburton's which have been published heretofore, is a thorough refutation, if any were needed after Edward Everett's conclusive statement, of the old slander once uttered in Parliament, and occasionally revived on both sides of the Atlantic, that Mr. Webster obtained dishonest advantage over the English Commissioner by suppressing an ancient map wherein the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia had been traced in conformity with the British claim. Lord Ashburton's expressions of friendship and esteem for Mr. Webster are wholly inconsistent with such a transaction: