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]
[1] I am a _man_, and I consider nothing that affects _man_ as
foreign to me.
[2] I am an _American_, and I consider nothing that affects
_America_ as foreign to me.
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.