Letters écrites d'Italie en 1812 et 13, à M. Charles Pictet, l'un des Rédacteurs de la Bibliothéque Britannique par Fréderic Sullin de Chateauvieux. A Paris et à Genéve. 1816, 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 576.
Perhaps there are none of our natural advantages which it still remains for us fully to appreciate and avail ourselves of, so much as those which respect the agriculture of our country.
Without running into all the errors of the economists or adopting their entire theory, we trust that we may assert the paramount importance of this pursuit, particularly to the United States. To every country it affords at least a partial, and often a complete subsistence for its population; it gives a constant and healthful employment to sometimes more than half and never less than a fifth of the community; its profits though not so large, are more certain than those in other employments of captal; and while it replaces the annual advance invested, a surplus profit has accrued, which can be employed as private interest and the public good may require.[3] But in the United States the cultivation of the soil has these and many more advantages; nay, it is intimately connected with our national character, because it powerfully acts upon the morals and constitution of our citizens. If it be true, that the torch of liberty has always burned with a purer and brighter lustre on the mountains than on the plains, it is still more true, that the sentiments of honour and integrity more generally animate the rough but manly form of the farmer, than the debilitated body of the artisan. There is in that primitive and honourable occupation, the culture of the earth, something which, while it pours into the lap of the state an increase beyond every other employment, gives us more than the fabled stone, not only a subsistence, but a placid feeling of contentment; not only creates the appetite to enjoy, but guarantees its continuance by a robust constitution, fortified with the safeguards of temperance and virtue.
The anxiety of our countrymen to possess in fee a spot of ground however small, and the consequent paucity of leases, is a fact no less curious than it is solitary. This is not the case, or at least in any considerable degree, in any other country. Such indeed in Britain were formerly those small proprietors called franklins, who possessed a keen spirit of independence and a determined opposition to oppression; feelings which, with the alienation of their farms, have gradually departed from the breasts of their descendants.
Notwithstanding, however, the ease with which the pride of independent possession may be gratified, it is not the less true that agriculture, instead of being a favoured, has been a degraded and unpopular pursuit; that instead of cherishing every motive which might lead to its honourable extension, we have endeavoured gradually to weaken its legitimate efforts. It is indeed a singular inquiry, why the cultivation of the soil among us should have been so little encouraged, when every state in Europe, since the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, has turned its most assiduous attention to this most important department of domestic economy, and ultimately borrowed from it the resources which have carried them through the prodigious conflicts of the last generation.
There have been many causes, certainly not all of equal efficacy, which have co-operated against the interests of agriculture. But there is a prominent one to which we can but just allude. During a very considerable period, since the peace of '83, the peculiar situation of Europe has afforded opportunities for commercial enterprise too tempting to be resisted.—American merchants received, in the lapse of a very few years, the most astonishing accessions of wealth; and fortunes, ordinarily the fruit of a laborious life, and never the portion of many, were amassed with unparalleled rapidity, and by large numbers. Our domestic prosperity more than equalled the extension of our trade. It was then that the compting-houses of our merchants were filled with youth from the country, who forsook the slower but surer emoluments of agriculture, for the mushroom but unsubstantial fortunes of commerce; nay, who preferred the meanest drudgery behind the counter of a retail dealer, to the manly and invigorating toil of the cultivator of his paternal acres. Unfortunately this spirit of migration was encouraged by too great a success in trade. Feelings of vulgar pride contracted in town caused the manual labour of the farmer to be regarded as degrading; this unworthy sentiment spread with baleful influence, and when the compting-houses became overstocked and afforded no longer a resource, it was no uncommon thing to see a young man with no qualifications but a little bad Latin picked up at a miserable village school, forsake a large and fertile farm and apprentice himself to a poor country attorney.
Another cause of the depressed state of agriculture, mentioned in late publication,[4] is the constant emigration to the west. There must necessarily be a tendency to a most empoverishing system of cultivation, where people feel that after having extracted all the richness of the soil, they may throw it up and remove to a country, which offers them an untouched surface, and needs no artificial aid of composts or manure. The land, besides suffering from negligence consequent on the prospect of departure, will be worn out by successive crops, and long be rendered unfit for the most valuable dispositions of the agriculturist. Indeed we have been informed, that in many instances, when the land is almost ruined by the continued culture of tobacco, it is sold by the planter to some enterprizing and laborious individual, who may restore it by his patience and attention, while he himself removes to another spot, where the same wretched system of exhaustion may again be renewed.—There are other causes we might mention, such as the unwieldy size of our farms, and particularly the want of a regular enlightened farming system. But we cannot now stop to enter on these topics, but may notice them hereafter.
If then agriculture be so important an item in a nation's resources, affording such subsistence to its population, and a surplus capital to be employed in the various objects of national industry and enterprise, it would seem to follow, that nothing but very imperious circumstances should induce any government to repress its vigour, or palsy the exertions of those devoted to it. Immediately connected with such an attempt was the late bill before Congress, establishing a new tariff of duties. But why go back to a bill which was rejected? We answer, that it is not to be forgotten that private interest is one of the most powerful incentives to action, that the manufacturing interest is large and increasing, that one defeat will not discourage its partisans, and lastly, extraordinary as the fact may seem, that the bill in question, fraught with such varied evil, was thrown out by a majority of only one vote in the senate. The tendency of this project was not only to introduce an unequal system of taxation, but first, by the destruction of a large part of our foreign commerce, to diminish very materially the market for our home products, and secondly, to divert a large portion of agricultural industry into the service of the loom and spinning jenny.
But it will be asked, are manufactures then to be entirely neglected? Most certainly not. Still there is a certain limit, in a newly settled country with a thin population, beyond which their establishment is not only useless to government, but a burden to the people. It is undoubtedly true that the manufacture of articles of immediate necessity or very general circulation ought to be encouraged by a wise and provident people; but it ordinarily happens that these need no extraordinary patronage; their extended use soon gives a facility to the artist, which enables him to enter into competition with the foreigner, provided the raw material is to be found at home in any tolerable abundance. Thus we find that hats were manufactured in the colonies at a very early period; together with household furniture, saddlery, &c. they have long since ceased to be an article of importation. It is necessary for the well-being and security of a nation, that certain articles, should be manufactured within its limits, such as gunpowder, coarse clothing, and some others of a similar discription.—But the moment people attempt to force by means of high duties on foreign imports the production of a commodity, which, by reason of the extravagance of the wages of labour and other causes, must necessarily be sold at a much greater price than the imported one, their conduct would seem no less an affront to common sense, than a solecism in political economy.
The United States possess a very restricted capital; and as the tilling of the soil requires comparatively much fewer advances than any other department of industry, that capital became immediately invested in agriculture. Land, cheap, and fertile, constituted a fund which gave a certain profit. And as the productions of the labour of more than five eighths of our population went to purchase foreign articles either of luxury or necessity, a great and profitable intercourse was constantly maintained with Europe. Under an equitable system of foreign duties, arising from this commerce, the expenses of government were defrayed, our debt gradually extinguished, and by a powerful but necessary re-action our agriculture improved and extended. But the tariff bill restricted a large and valuable commerce principally with Britain. It is not to be supposed that, while we refused the broadcloths and hardware of England, she would still continue to buy the same proportion of our cotton and tobacco. Our market then for these articles would be so far lost; and if we now feel the effects of a diminished demand for our produce in consequence of the establishment of peace in Europe, how can it be thought a wise policy to suffer other embarrassments and losses, by excluding ourselves entirely from every foreign port where we might calculate upon its sale? Where then is our produce to find a vent? For assuredly the most enthusiastic friend of domestic manufactures could never imagine, that the most extensive establishment of them could ever give an adequate consumption for the present amount of our agricultural productions.