THE
RURAL MAGAZINE,
AND
LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE.
Vol. I. Philadelphia, Eighth Month, 1820. No. 8.
A FRIEND OF THE RURAL MAGAZINE TO ITS READERS.
There is nothing in which the honourable fame and steady prosperity of our country, and the best interests of its inhabitants, are more deeply involved, than in the promotion of agriculture. With one hundred and twenty millions of acres of cleared, or natural, strong, unwooded land, and a population computed at nine millions of persons, we have more soil already prepared for plantations, farms and grazing, in proportion to our numbers, than any other civilized people; and our capacities to add to our quantity of cleared or unwooded land, extend to ten times the number of acres. From the productions of these lands have our former happiness and wealth arisen, and from the commerce and fabrication of these productions, have our foreign and domestic trade, and all our home manufactures, worth above two hundred millions of dollars, sprung up. The merchants and manufacturers actually hold so real and great a competition for the natural and agricultural productions of the land, that none of these productions, capable of manufacture, were exported even in the last year, except cotton, in the manufacture of which we had made very great progress, in 1810; even without the double and war duties, or those existing at this time. They were supposed to be worth 15,000,000 of dollars in that year. The present crisis, when all nations are revising and improving their systems of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, appears to be a fit season for increased attention, consideration and exertion on our part; and first in the culture of the soil. It is proposed, as a suitable object for such a work as The Rural Magazine, to make some of those exertions in relation to agriculture and the connected subjects, which are often demanded by those strong tides in human life, which are dispensed to us in the course of divine Providence. Pennsylvania, and the five other states which are contiguous to her, making six in their whole number, contain about one hundred and forty millions of acres of land in the most temperate and genial farming climates of our country. The southern parts of that noble farming district even favours the cotton, the vine and the fig tree; and every species of production, requiring the tone of the northern part of the temperate zone for its growth or the fabrication of those productions, is adapted to the higher latitudes of that region of our country. The best culture of the eastern states is comprehended in the proper farming of that district. The effectual bearing of the productions of the south upon the profits of the farming of the middle, northern and eastern states, will always render the actual or new culture of our great southern district of sugar, rice, indigo, cotton and grape vines, deeply important us; because the cultivation of those and other productions, adapted to their climates, will prevent their attention, as principal objects, to those things which must always be produced by our cattle, grass, apple, vegetable and grain farms. The cider and apple brandy, for example, of the county of Morris, in New Jersey, which far exceeds the general belief, the superfine flour of the white wheat country of this middle district, and the fabrications of the dairy of the eastern states, sustain no interference at home or abroad, from the productions of those southern labourers who are employed on sugar, rice, cotton, indigo and tobacco; or may be employed on the fruit of the grape vine, the olive tree and their fabrications, which annually yield to France one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. The culture of the southern states is, therefore, in truth, a fit subject of attention and solicitude for the Pennsylvanians, and their surrounding northern and eastern brethren; and valuable papers on that subject would always deserve a place in The Rural Magazine. If the African Terence has been quoted, beyond any other writer, for the beautiful exclamation of one of his personified characters, "Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto,"[1] how impossible is it for a true and faithful member of this favoured nation to forget to exclaim, "Americanus sum, et nihil Americani a me alienum puto."[2]
Some of the most important practices of agriculture belong to all our climates. Irrigation, beautiful, elegant, profitable irrigation, or the watering of grounds, by turning upon them streams that have been wont to run waste, and pour their unused vegetative powers into navigable rivers, is a great example. The venerable and judicious Arthur Young wrote to his compatriots in England, from the districts of Piedmont and Milan, the best irrigated parts of the valley of the Po, that such was the perfection of that branch of agriculture and the connected branches of working and neat cattle, dairies, rice, &c. that, excellent as was their English system in his vicinity, his friends could have no conception of perfection in farming, without visiting that part of upper Italy. The orange trees are carefully irrigated in the kingdom of Portugal, as are the vines of Madeira, and the rice in those of our southern states which produce that wholesome, valuable and delightful grain.
Let us, then, in every section of our country, keep attention on the stretch to improve our whole landed interest, which, like our great internal seas, our heaven dispensed lakes, is the natural head, from which the sister streams of commerce and manufactures are, unforcedly, to flow, and run till the end of time.