previous ones: then capital may be invested in | sion necessary, and the more widely men are agriculture with more advantage than in engines, separated from each other the greater is the because the last are only of equal, whereas the necessity for ships and wagons, and the larger other is of superior, power. must be the proportion of the population engaged in the work of transportation and exchange. This is the state of things advocated by the school of the British moneyed aristocracy, as being the most productive. “A steam-engine produces nothing. It diminishes the labor required for converting wool into cloth, or grain into flour; for freeing mines from water; or for transporting wool, or grain, or coal. The gain from its use is the wages of that labor, minus the loss by deterioration of the machine. Labor applied to fashioning the earth produces wages, plus the gain by improvement of the machine. The more an engine can be made to yield the made to yield the better will it become. The man who neglects his farm to employ himself and his engine in the work of fashioning or exchanging the products of other farms, obtains wages, minus loss of capital. He who employs himself on his own farm obtains wages, plus profits resulting from the improvement of the farm, to the extent that that improvement exceeds the loss from the deterioration of the spades, ploughs, engines, or other machinery that is used." worse it will become. The more the earth can be In illustration of this, Mr. Carey has given the case of the two men, A and B, which the reviewer has taken the trouble to extract* for the purpose of offering almost a page of comments, the object of which we suppose to be that of proving that the carter who transports the food is a more productive laborer than the man who produces the food. The exact "meaning or bearing" of the extract he has given is, as he says, beyond his comprehension, a fact which results probably from his having accidentally alighted on this passage somewhere, and not having read the previous or subsequent paragraphs. We do hope, and that most earnestly, that before he shall again undertake to review this book, he will take the trouble to read it. If he shall do so, he will then probably be enabled to teach his readers that in the school to which he belongs it is taught that the larger the proportion of the population that employs itself in the work of transportation, the greater will be the quantity of the necessaries and comforts of life produced; and the greater the proportion employed in the production of those necessaries and comforts, the smaller will be the quantity produced. The whole system is an almost endless mass of contradictions. If men do commence the work of cultivation on the rich soils of the earth, and if with the growth of population it becomes more difficult to obtain food, then is disper * See page 236, ante. If, on the contrary, they commence with the poorer soils, and if with the growth of population and wealth they are enabled to obtain the command of the richer ones, then there must be in the natural progress of society a tendency to concentration, with steady diminution in the proportion of ships and wagons, and equally steady diminution in the loss of labor employed in the work of transportation and exchange. Ships and wagons produce nothing, but ploughs and looms do produce. The fewer sailors and wagoners needed, the more numerous will be the men who can follow the plough and drive the shuttle, the more productive will be the labor, and the more readily will the laborer rise to be a capitalist. This is the state of things advocated by the American Democratic free-trade school, but which is denounced by our Democratic reviewer. It will now be 'obvious to our readers that the more exchanges are made on the spot, the less will be the necessity for transportation, and the greater will be the power of the farmer to bestow both labor and manure upon his land, and that with every such increase of power the productiveness of labor must increase. Further, labor, applied to the great machine of production, the earth, is productive of permanent results, whereas that applied to changing the mere form of the things produced, as in converting cotton into cloth, produces only temporary ones, and the growth of wealth is always in the ratio in which labor is applied in the former manner. The English school teaches directly the reverse of this, and the reverse of what is everywhere seen and known to be the fact; and our American free-traders follow blindly in their track. "The earth (says Mr. Carey) is the sole producer. Man fashions and exchanges. A part of his labor is applied to the fashioning of the great machine, and this produces changes that are permanent. The drain once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone, once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. It passes into the food of man and animals, and ever after takes its part in the same round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. The iron rusts, and gradually passes into soil, to take its part with the clay and the lime. That portion of his labor gives him wages while preparing the machine for greater future production. That other portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging the products of the machine, produces temporary results, and gives him wages alone. Whatever tends, therefore, to diminish the quantity of labor necessary for the fashioning and exchanging of the products, tends to increase the quantity that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present return to labor, preparing for a future further increase. 66 The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year's wages. To pound this between two stones requires twenty days of labor, and the work is not half done. Had he a mill in the neighborhood he would have better flour, and he would have almost his whole twenty days to bestow upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe, he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his horse on the road to obtain another. His machine loses the time and the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been at hand. The real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power which they afford him to devote his labor more and more to the preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case with all the machinery of preparation and exchange. The plough enables him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. He saves four days for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as without it could be drained by thousands of days of labor. He has more leisure to marl or lime his land. The more he can extract from his ma transportation, the greater is the, amount of labor that can be thus bestowed; and “with every improvement in the machinery of exchange," says Mr. Carey, "there is a diminution in the proportion which that machinery bears to the mass of production, because of the extraordinary increase of product consequent upon the increased power of applying labor to building up the great machine. It is a matter of daily observation that the demand for horses and men increases as railroads drive them from the turnpikes, and the reason is, that the farmer's means of improving his land increase more rapidly than men and horses for his work. The man who has, thus far, sent to market his half-fed cattle, accompanied by horses and men to drive them, and wagons and horses loaded with hay or turnips with which to feed them on the road, and to fatten them when at market, now fattens them on the ground, and sends them by railroad ready for the slaughter-house. His use of the machinery of exchange is diminished ninetenths. He keeps his men, his horses, and his Wagons, and the refuse of his hay or turnips, at home. The former are employed in ditching and draining, while the latter fertilizes the soil heretofore cultivated. His production doubles, and he accumulates rapidly, while the people around him have more to eat, more to spend in clothing, and more to accumulate themselves. He wants laborers in the field, and they want clothes and houses. The shoemaker and the carpenter, finding that there exists a demand for their labor, now join the community, eating the food on the ground on which it is produced; and thus the machinery of exchange is improved, while the quantity required is diminished. The quantity of flour consumed on the spot induces the miller to come and eat his share, while preparing that of others. The labor of exchanging is diminished, and more is given to the land, and the lime is now turned up. Tons of turnips are obtained from the same surface face that before gave bushels of rye. The quantity to be consumed increases faster than the population, and more mouths are needed on the spot, and next the woollen-mill comes. The wool no longer requires wagons and horses, which now are turned to transporting coal, to enable the farmer to dispense with his woods, and to reduce to cultivation the fine soil that has, for centuries, produced nothing but timber. Production again increases, and the new wealth now takes the form of the cotton-mill; and, with every step in the progress, the farmer finds new demands on the great machine he has constructed, accompanied with increased power on his part to build it up higher and stronger, and to sink its foundations deeper. He now supplies beef and mutton, wheat, butter, eggs, poultry, cheese, and every other of the comforts and luxuries of life, for which the climate is suited; and from the same land which afforded, when his father or grandfather first commenced cultivation on the light soil of the hills, scarcely sufficient rye or barley to support life.” chine the greater is its value, because every thing he takes is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production. The machine, therefore, improves by use; whereas spades, and ploughs, and steam-engines, and all other of the machines used by man, are but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as food, though not so rapidly. The earth is the great labor savings' bank; and the value to man of all other machines is in the direct ratio of their tendency to aid him in increasing his deposits in the only bank whose dividends are perpetually increasing, while its capital is perpetually doubling. That it may continue for ever so to do, all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its produce; the manure; and that it may do the consumer and the producer must take their places by each other. That done, every change that is effected becomes permanent, and tends to facilitate other and greater changes. The whole business of the farmer consists in making and improving soils, and the earth rewards him for his kindness by giving him more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her." 80, It will be observed that among the most The less the necessity for wasting labor in important advantages enumerated as result "The Kentuckian exhausts his land with hemp, and then wastes his manure on the road, in carrying it to market. Had he a market on the ground for corn and oats, peas and beans, cabbages, and potatoes, and turnips, he might restore the waste: but the rich bottom lands must remain undrained until he can place the consumer side by side with the producer. "Virginia is exhausted by tobacco, and men desert their homes to seek in the west new lands, to be again exhausted and thus are labor and mapure wasted, while the great machine deteriorates, because men cannot come to take from it the vast supplies of food with which it is charged. Thousands of acres, heavily timbered with oak, poplar, beech, sugar-tree, elm and hickory, are offered at about the government price, or a dollar an acre, and on long credit, but they are not worth clearing: and they cannot be cleared, until there shall arise a demand for lumber for the construction of houses, mills, and railroads: and that cannot arise so long as men shall continue to be limited to the use of the worst machinery of exchange; wasting on the roads the manure yielded by the products of their poor soils, and the labor that might be applied to the clearing of the rich ones. An acre of wheat has been made to produce a hundred bushels, and such will, at some future day, be the produce of these lands: but the consumer and the producer will then be near neighbors to each other, and all the manure produced by the land will go back again to the great river of these rich supplies. She pays well those that feed her, but she starves those who starve her: and she expels them. The cotton planter raises small crops on thin soils, and he, too, is ruined by drought. He tries rich soils, and rains destroy his crop, even to the extent of more than two hundred thousand bales, worth many millions of dollars, in a single season. Were he near neighbor to consumers of food, vegetable and animal, he could raise large crops of grass and food on rich lands, and manure the poor ones; and then he would suffer little from drought or rain. He would have always at hand aid in harvest, and his cotton fields would yield him larger crops from smaller surface. "South Carolina has millions of acres admirably adapted to the raising of rich grasses, the manure produced from which would enrich the exhausted cotton lands: but she exports rice and cotton, and loses all the manure, and must continue so to do until the consumer of veal, and beef, and corn, shall take his place by the side of the producer of cotton. When that time shall arrive, her wealth and population will both increase but until then both must continue to diminish.” The meaning of this is not to be doubted. The manure is the refuse of the crops. Nevertheless, the reviewer undertakes to amuse his readers by endeavoring to have them believe that the refuse of an acre of potatoes consists of nothing but potato staĺks, and that the meaning of the author whose work he was reviewing, was that those potatostalks were more valuable as manure than an acre of wheat straw. We are quite unwilling to believe our contemporary to be capable of intentional misrepresentation, and to that unwillingness is due our belief that the writer of the review had never read the book. The article throughout looks as if it had had two fathers, one of whom read the volume and selected the passages to be extracted, while the other wrote the commentary. If we are wrong in this, we shall be glad to know who will be willing to assume the responsibility of so gross a misrepresentation as that to which we have here called the attention of our readers. A still more remarkable one will be found in the following passage:— erable in the work is the perpetual advocacy of "The only protectionist recommendation discov centralization." An entire chapter of Mr. Carey's volume is devoted to the exhibition of the advantages resulting from that combination of effort which results from concentration, and the exposure of the injurious consequences resulting from centralization such as England desires to impose upon the farmers and planters of the world, in constituting herself sole factor and sole manufacturer for the world. At the close of the first portion of this chapter, devoted to concentration, Mr. Carey says: "Such is concentration. Opposed thereto is centralization. The one looks inward, and tends to promote a love of home and of quiet happiness and a desire for union; facilitating the growth of wealth and the preparation of the great machine of production, and enabling man to acquire a love of books and a habit of independent thought and action. Here each man minds his own business, and superintends the application of the proceeds of his own labor. Centralization, on the contrary, looks outward, and tends to promote a love of war and discord, and a disrelish for home and its pursuits, preventing the growth of wealth, and retarding the preparation of the great machine. Under it men are forced to move in masses, governed by ministers, and generals, and admirals; and the habit of independent thought or action has no existence. Here no man is permitted to mind his own business, and no man controls the application of the proceeds of his labor. The State manages every thing, and the State is composed of those whose profits are derived from managing the af fairs of others." The reviewer having asserted, in the face of all this, that Mr. Carey was the perpetual advocate of "centralization," we really do not see how he can escape from the charge of wilful misrepresentation, except upon the plea that he had reviewed the book without having read it. For ourselves, we are will ing to permit him to determine upon which horn of the dilemma he will hang himself. "I will briefly refer to some points which came under my observation in that part of the country which I visited. First of all, as to the state of agriculture in the northern parts of America, in our own provinces and in New-England, with which we are ourselves more familiar, when I tell you generally that the state of agriculture in those parts of America is what the state of agriculture in Scotland probably was eighty or ninety years ago; and when I tell you that in some parts of New-Brunswick they are very nearly in the precise condition in which Scotland was one hundred and twenty years ago, you will have an idea of the state of agriculture in North America. The system of agriculture is no farther forward-it is exceedingly far behind. "Now what has been their procedure-by what kind of procedure have they brought about the state of exhaustion to which the soil has been reduced? Of course, in speaking of the exhausted soil, I do not refer to the virgin soil which has never received the plough or the spade, bnt to the soil under their cultivation, and which they are now exhausting. When I tell you how the land is cultivated, you will understand how this exhaustion has been produced. The forest is in the first place cut down and burnt, after which the ashes are scattered, and a crop of wheat and oats is sown. When this crop is cut down another is sown; but they do not always remove the strawthey do not trouble themselves with any manure. The second year they sow it again and harrow it, and generally take three crops in succession. When they can take no more out of it, they either Sow grass seeds, or as frequently let it seed itself. They will then sometimes cut hay for 12, 14, 16, 18, or 20 years in succession; in fact, as long as they can even get half a ton an acre from it. And the land, when they are able to obtain as much you may suppose what is the natural fertility of as three or four tons per acre at first, and go on cutting it for twelve years. They will probably have two tons an acre during all that length of time. The land is then broken up, and the crop of oats taken, then potatoes, then a crop of wheat, and then bay for twelve years again, and so the same course is repeated. Now this is the way in which the land is treated-this is the way in which the exhaustion is brought about. This exhaustion exists in Nova Scotia, New-Brunswick, Lower Canada, in Upper Canada, to a considerable extent, over the whole of New-England, and extends even into the State of New-York. "Now, the condition of things in the Western States, in reference to England, is precisely the same as the condition of, England in reference to condition of the farmers is exceedingly bad, and the wheat-producing countries of the Baltic. The in Maine I was informed that they were all in a state of bankruptcy. The land is all mortgaged, which hangs like a mill-stone round their necks, and is worse even than the state of farmers in this the western parts of New-York or Lake Ontario. country. They are thus unable to compete with You have all heard of the famous wheat of Genesee, where the land is more fertile than in any part of Great Britain; and I learned there that they are laying the land down to grass, because they cannot afford to grow wheat. "In New-Brunswick, New-England, Vermont, New-Hampshire, Connecticut and New-York, the growth of wheat has almost ceased, and it is now gradually receding farther and farther westward. Now, when I tell you this, you will see what I believe to be the case is really the case—that it will not be very long before America will be unable-in fact the United States are unable now-to supply us with wheat in any large quantity. If we could bring Indian corn into general use, we might get plenty of it; but I do not think that the United States need be any bugbear to you. I believe the great source of competition you will have to contend with is the Baltic, and the countries on the borders of the Black Sea." Such are the results of agriculture in every country that makes no market on the land for the products of the land. In Ireland, | now, the yield of wheat is under twelve bushels, the soil has been exhausted, and such has and it diminishes from year to year, because been the case in India and in Portugal, and of this perpetual destruction of the farmer's in every country subjected to the British capital. In New-York, the average yield of monopoly system, so strenuously supported potatoes is but seventy-five bushels, when it by our Democratic Reviewer. The farmer is should be three hundred; and that of corn every where wearing out his land, wasting but twenty-five bushels, when it might be the manure yielded by his products, and an- seventy-five; and yet the system which nihilating his own capital, the consequence looks to the exhaustion of the farmer's capof which is a perpetual diminution in the ital is taught in a journal that looks to the return to agricultural labor. In Ohio, even | farmers and planters for its circulation! [In the April number will appear a review of the second part of the Democratic Review article.] OUR TRANSATLANTIC ARTICLE.* BEING A REVIEW BY AN ENGLISH HAND OF THE RECENT TRAVELS OF ONE OF HIS TRANSATLANTIC COUSINS. [At what cost, and by what pains, the manuscript of the following article was procured, it were unbecoming to say. It bears internal marks of having been written for Fraser's Magazine. The style is Fraser's, and the fire and vivacity of the writer, who tears up his wretched subject with the courage and discrimination of a true "British critic," show a Fraserian pen. Public sentiment among the better class demands a British model for our Review; but who would not prefer originals before their imitations! The extraordinary prices given for a tearing article in London and Edinburgh puts a sharp restriction as to quantity upon an American editor publishing original British matter. We did not doubt, however, our readers would prefer a single original article intended for Fraser, and written by a genuine "shrewd Briton," to the entire year's price of the Review. If others can be obtained, at whatever cost, written for Blackwood and the Edinburgh, they will appear hereafter; but the difficulty of procuring these is understood to be extraordinary. And thus we are suddenly become international;-a generous emulation is established between ourselves and our superiors. Let us hope, under these new auspices, that the spirit of calumny and villainous personality which disgraces the American press will hereby receive a check, by the gentlemanly example of more polished and judicious writers, whose acknowledged aristocratic advantages must be respected by all deep-thinking Americans.] THIS is a disgusting book, its author a squint-eyed hypocrite. What business the despicable puppy has to get his dirty publication reprinted in England, his master who sent him knows best; but, for our part, we think it would have been a mercy to the poor peeping rogue to have hung him out of hand: his life must be a burthen to him, if he has any consciousness of it. with full information of his movements and designs. The preface of his pitiful performance is a lie from beginning to end. The author professes to be a clergyman. He is, in fact, a preacher of that detestable, heathenish sect of Unitarians, of whom, we regret to say, a few may be found in England in the manufacturing suburbs. "I brought letters of introduction to several A police officer, who was put upon the noblemen and gentlemen of distinction-Lord L., track of this mischievous adventurer, and Lord C., and Lord B., and many others; but sewho noted every action of the creature from lected only a few of the best, and found my adthe moment he set foot in London, has fur-vantage in it. And let me here take occasion to observe, that the nobility and gentry in England nished us, by permission from high quarters, are the only classes with whom an American can * Travels in England. By Rev. Thomas Trueboy. London: Higginbottom, Johnson & Co. 8vo. 2 vols. |