Chapter I: Agriculture

"Plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche, moins le gouvernement peut
usurper sur le Souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique
est donc en ceci, d'agir à grandes distances. A l'aide des points
d'appui qu'il se donne, sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des
léviers. Celle du peuple, au contraire, n'agit que concentrée: elle
s'évapore et se perd en s'étendant, comme l'effet de la poudre
éparse à terre, et qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les
moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la tyrannie. Les bêtes
féroces ne règnent que dans les déserts."

_Rousseau._

The pride and delight of Americans is in their quantity of land. I do not remember meeting with one to whom it had occurred that they had too much. Among the many complaints of the minority, this was never one. I saw a gentleman strike his fist on the table in an agony at the country being so "confoundedly prosperous:" I heard lamentations over the spirit of speculation; the migration of young men to the back country; the fluctuating state of society from the incessant movement westwards; the immigration of labourers from Europe; and the ignorance of the sparse population. All these grievances I heard perpetually complained of; but in the same breath I was told in triumph of the rapid sales of land; of the glorious additions which had been made by the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and of the probable gain of Texas. Land was spoken of as the unfailing resource against over manufacture; the great wealth of the nation; the grand security of every man in it.

On this head, the two political parties seem to be more agreed than on any other. The federalists are the great patrons of commerce; but they are as proud of the national lands as the broadest of the democrats. The democrats, however, may be regarded as the patrons of agriculture, out of the slave States. There seems to be a natural relation between the independence of property and occupation enjoyed by the agriculturist, and his watchfulness over State Rights and the political importance of individuals. The simplicity of country life, too, appears more congenial with the workings of democratic institutions, than the complex arrangements of commerce and manufactures.

The possession of land is the aim of all action, generally speaking, and the cure for all social evils, among men in the United States. If a man is disappointed in politics or love, he goes and buys land. If he disgraces himself, he betakes himself to a lot in the west. If the demand for any article of manufacture slackens, the operatives drop into the unsettled lands. If a citizen's neighbours rise above him in the towns, he betakes himself where he can be monarch of all he surveys. An artisan works, that he may die on land of his own. He is frugal, that he may enable his son to be a landowner. Farmers' daughters go into factories that they may clear off the mortgage from their fathers' farms; that they may be independent landowners again. All this is natural enough in a country colonised from an old one, where land is so restricted in quantity as to be apparently the same thing as wealth. It is natural enough in a young republic, where independence is of the highest political value. It is natural enough in a country where political economy has never been taught by its only effectual propounder--social adversity. And, finally, it falls out well for the old world, in prospect of the time when the new world must be its granary.

The democratic party are fond of saying that the United States are intended to be an agricultural country. It seems to me that they are intended to be everything. The Niagara basin, the Mississippi valley, and the South, will be able to furnish the trading world with agricultural products for ever,--for aught we can see. But it is clear that there are other parts of the country which must have recourse to manufactures and commerce.

The first settlers in New England got land, and thought themselves rich. Their descendants have gone on to do the same; and they now find themselves poor. With the exception of some Southerners, ruined by slavery, who cannot live within their incomes, I met with no class in the United States so anxious about the means of living as the farmers of New England. In the seventeenth century, curious purchases of land were made, and the fathers were wealthy. In those days, a certain farmer Dexter bought the promontory of Nahant, which stretches out into Massachusetts Bay, of Black Willey, an Indian chief, for a suit of clothes; the part of the promontory called Great Nahant measuring a mile and a half in circuit. Others, who held land in similar or larger quantities, divided it equally among their children, whose portions had not been subdivided below the point of comfort, when the great west on the one hand, and the commerce of the seas on the other, opened new resources. From this time, the consolidation of estates has gone on, nearly as fast as the previous division. The members of a family dispose of their portions of land to one, and go to seek better fortunes elsewhere than the rocky soil of New England can afford. Still, while the population of Massachusetts is scarcely above half that of London, its number of landowners is greater than that of all England.

The Massachusetts farmers were the first to decline; but now the comparative adversity of agriculture has extended even into Vermont. A few years ago, lenders of money into Vermont received thirty per cent. interest from farmers: now they are glad to get six per cent.; and this does not arise from the farmers having saved capital of their own. They have but little property besides their land. Their daughters, and even their sons, resort to domestic service in Boston for a living. Boston used to be supplied from Vermont with fowls, butter, and eggs: but the supply has nearly ceased. This is partly owing to an increased attention to the growth of wool for the manufacturers; but partly also to the decrease of capital and enterprise among the farmers.

In Massachusetts the farmers have so little property besides their land, that they are obliged to mortgage when they want to settle a son or daughter, or make up for a deficient crop. The great Insurance Company at Boston is the formidable creditor to many. This Company will not wait a day for the interest. If it is not ready, loss or ruin ensues. Many circumstances are now unfavourable to the old-fashioned Massachusetts farmer. Domestic manufactures, which used to employ the daughters, are no longer worth while, in the presence of the factories. The young men, who should be the daughters' husbands, go off to the west. The idea of domestic service is not liked. There is an expensive family at home, without sufficient employment; and they may be considered poor. These are evils which may be shaken off any day. I speak of them, not as demanding much compassion, but as indicating a change in the state of affairs; and especially that New England is designed to be a manufacturing and commercial region. It is already common to see agriculture joined with other employments. The farmers of the coast are, naturally, fishermen also. They bring home fish, manure their land with the offal; sow their seed, and go out again to fish while it is growing. Shoemaking is now joined with farming. In the long winter evenings, all the farmers' families around Lynn are busy shoe-making; and in the spring, they turn out into the fields again. The largest proportion of factory girls too is furnished by country families.

The traveller may see, by merely passing through the country, without asking information, how far New England ought to be an agricultural country, if the object of its society be to secure the comfort of its members, rather than the continuance of old customs. The valleys, like that of the Connecticut river, whose soil is kept rich by annual inundations, and whose fields have no fences, gladden the eye of the observer. So it is with particular spots elsewhere, where, it may be remarked, the fences are of the ordinary, slovenly kind, and too much care does not seem to have been bestowed on the arrangements and economy of the estate. Elsewhere, may be seen stony fields, plots of the greenest pasture, with grey rocks standing up in the midst, and barberry bushes sprinkled all about: trim orchards, and fences on which a great deal of spare time must have been bestowed. Instead of the ugly, hasty snake-fence, there is a neatly built wall, composed of the stones which had strewed the fields: sometimes the neatest fence of all; a wall of stones and sods, regularly laid, with a single rail along the top: sometimes a singular fence, which would be perfect, but for the expense of labour required; roots of trees, washed from the soil, and turned side upwards, presenting a complete chevaux-de-frise, needing no mending, and lasting the "for ever" of this world. About these farm-houses, a profusion of mignonette may be seen; and in the season, the rich major convolvulus, or scarlet runners, climbing up to the higher windows. The dove-cotes are well looked to. There has evidently been time and thought for everything. This is all very pretty to look at,--even bewitching to those who do not see beneath the surface, nor know that hearts may be aching within doors about perilous mortgages, and the fate of single daughters; but, it being known that such worldly anxieties do exist, it is not difficult to perceive that these are the places in which they abide.

There is, of course, a knowledge of the difficulty on the spot; but not always a clear view of coming events, which include a remedy. The commonest way of venting any painful sensibility on the subject, is declamation against luxury; or rather, against the desire for it in those who are supposed unable to afford it. This will do no good. If the Pilgrim Fathers themselves had had luxury before their eyes, they would have desired to have it; and they would have been right. Luxury is, in itself, a great good. Luxury is _delicious fare_,--of any and every kind: and He who bestowed it meant all men to have it. The evil of luxury is in its restriction; in its being made a cause of separation between men, and a means of encroachment by some on the rights of others. Frugality is a virtue only when it is required by justice and charity. Luxury is vicious only when it is obtained by injustice, and carried on into intemperance. It is a bad thing that a Massachusetts farmer should mortgage his farm, in order that his wife and daughters may dress like the ladies of Boston; but the evil is not in the dress; it is rather in his clinging to a mode of life which does not enable him to pay his debts. The women desire dress, not only because it is becoming, but because they revolt from sinking, even outwardly, into a lower station of life than they once held: and this is more than harmless; it is honourable. What they have to do is to make up their minds to be consistent. They must either go down with their farm, for love of it, and the ways which belong to it: or they must make a better living in some other manner. They cannot have the old farm and its ways, and luxury too. Nobody has a right to decide for them which they ought to choose; and declaiming against luxury will therefore do no good. It is, however, pretty clear which they will choose, while luxury and manufactures are growing before their eyes; and, in that case, declaiming against luxury can do little but harm: it will only destroy sympathy between the declaimers and those who may find the cap fit.

One benevolent lady strongly desires and advises that manufactures should be put down; and the increased population all sent away somewhere, that New England may be as primitive and sparsely peopled as in days when it was, as she supposes, more virtuous than now. Whenever she can make out what virtue is, so as to prove that New England was ever more virtuous than now, her plans may find hearers; but not till then. I mention these things merely to show how confirmed is the tendency of New England to manufactures, in preference to agriculture.

There is one certain test of the permanent fitness of any district of country for agricultural purposes; the settlement of any large number of Germans in it. The Germans give any price for good land, and use it all. They are much smiled at by the vivacious and enterprising Americans for their plodding, their attachment to their own methods, and the odd direction taken by their pride.[12] The part of Pennsylvania where they abound is called the Boeotia of America. There is a story current against them that they were seen to parade with a banner, on which was inscribed "No schools," when the State legislature was about establishing a school system. On the other hand, it is certain that they have good German newspapers prepared among themselves: that their politics do them high honour, considering the very short political education they have had: and that they know more of political economy than their native neighbours. They show by their votes that they understand the tariff and bank questions; and they are staunch supporters of democratic principles.

Nothing can be more thriving than the settlements of Germans, when they have once been brought into order. Their fields are well fenced; their implements of the most substantial make; and their barns a real curiosity. While the family of the farmer is living in a poor log-house, or a shabby, unpainted frame-house, the barn has all the pains of its owner lavished upon it. I saw several, freshly painted with red, with eleven glass windows, with venetian blinds, at each end, and twelve in front. They keep up the profitable customs of their country. The German women are the only women seen in the fields and gardens in America, except a very few Dutch, and the slaves in the south. The stores of pumpkins, apples, and onions in the stoup (piazza) are edifying to behold. Under them sits the old dame of the house, spinning at her large wheel; and her grand-children, all in grey homespun, look as busy as herself.

The German settlers always contrive to have a market, either by placing themselves near one, or bestirring themselves to make one. They have no idea of sitting down in a wilderness, and growing wild in it. A great many of them are market-gardeners near the towns.[13]

It is scarcely possible to foresee, with distinctness, the destination of the southern States, east of the Alleghanies, when the curse of slavery shall be removed. Up to that period, continual deterioration is unavoidable. Efforts are being made to compensate for the decline of agriculture by pushing the interests of commerce. This is well; for the "opening" of every new rail-road, of every new pier, is another blow given to slavery. The agriculture of Virginia continues to decline; and her revenue is chiefly derived from the rearing of slaves as stock for the southern market. In the north and west parts of this State, where there is more farming than planting, it has long been found that slavery is ruinous; and when I passed through, in the summer of 1835, I saw scarcely any but whites, for some hundreds of miles along the road, except where a slave trader was carrying down to the south the remains that he had bought up. Unless some new resource is introduced, Virginia will be almost impoverished when the traffic in slaves comes to an end; which, I have a strong persuasion, will be the case before very long. The Virginians themselves are, it seems, aware of their case. I saw a factory at Richmond, worked by black labour, which was found, to the surprise of those who tried the experiment, to be of very good quality.

The shores of the south, low and shoaly, are unfavourable to foreign commerce. The want of a sufficiency of good harbours will probably impel the inhabitants of the southern States to renew their agricultural pursuits, and merely confine themselves to internal commerce. The depression of agriculture is only temporary, I believe. It began from slavery, and is aggravated by the opening of the rich virgin soils of the south-west. But the time will come when improved methods of tillage, with the advantage of free labour, will renew the prosperity of Virginia, and North and South Carolina.

No mismanagement short of employing slaves will account for the deterioration of the agricultural wealth of these States. When the traveller observes the quality of some of the land now under cultivation, he wonders how other estates could have been rendered so unprofitable as they are. The rich Congaree bottoms, in South Carolina, look inexhaustible; but some estates, once as fine, now lie barren and deserted. I went over a plantation, near Columbia, South Carolina, where there were four thousand acres within one fence, each acre worth fifteen hundred dollars. This land has been cropped yearly with cotton since 1794, and is now becoming less productive; but it is still very fine. The cotton seed is occasionally returned to the soil; and this is the only means of renovation used. Four hundred negroes work this estate. We saw the field trenched, ready for sowing. The sowing is done by hand, thick, and afterwards thinned. I saw the cotton elsewhere, growing like twigs. I saw also some in pod. There are three or four pickings of pods in a season; of which the first gathering is the best. Each estate has its cotton press. In the gin, the seed is separated from the cotton; and the latter is pressed and packed for sale.

There seems nothing to prevent the continuance or renovation of the growth of this product, under more favourable circumstances. Whether the rice swamps will have to be given up, or whether they may be tilled by free black labour, remains to be seen. The Chinese grow rice; and so do the Italians, without the advantage of free black labour. If, in the worst case, the rice swamps should have to be relinquished, the loss would be more than compensated by the improvement which would take place in the farming districts; land too high for planting. The western, mountainous parts of these States would thus become the most valuable.

It was amusing to hear the praises of corn (Indian corn) in the midst of the richest cotton, rice, and tobacco districts. The Indian looks with silent wonder upon the settler, who becomes visibly a capitalist in nine months, on the same spot where the red man has remained equally poor, all his life. In February, both are alike bare of all but land, and a few utensils. By the end of the next November, the white settler has his harvest of corn; more valuable to him than gold and silver. It will procure him many things which they could not. A man who has corn, may have everything. He can sow his land with it; and, for the rest, everything eats corn, from slave to chick. Yet, in the midst of so much praise of corn, I found that it cost a dollar a bushel; that every one was complaining of the expenses of living; that, so far from mutton being despised, as we have been told, it was much desired, but not to be had; and that milk was a great rarity. Two of us, in travelling, asked for a draught of milk. We had each a very small tumbler-full, and were charged a quarter-dollar. The cultivation of land is as exclusively for exportable products, as in the West Indies, in the worst days of their slavery; when food, and even bricks for building, were imported from England. The total absence of wise rural economy, under the present system, opens great hope of future improvement. The forsaken plantations are not so exhausted of their resources as it is supposed, from their producing little cotton, that they must be. The deserted fields may yet be seen, some day, again fruitful in cotton, with corn-fields, pasturage, and stock, (not human,) flourishing in appropriate spots.

Adversity is the best teacher of economy here, as elsewhere. In the first flush of prosperity, when a proprietor sits down on a rich virgin soil, and the price of cotton is rising, he buys bacon and corn for his negroes, and other provisions for his family, and devotes every rod of his land to cotton-growing. I knew of one in Alabama, who, like his neighbours, paid for his land and the maintenance of his slaves with the first crop, and had a large sum over, wherewith to buy more slaves and more land. He paid eight thousand dollars for his land, and all the expenses of the establishment, and had, at the end of the season, eleven thousand dollars in the bank. It was thought, by a wise friend of this gentleman's, that it was a great injury, instead of benefit to his fortune, that his labourers were not free. To use this wise man's expression, "it takes two white men to make a black man work;" and he was confident that it was not necessary, on any pretence whatever, to have a single slave in Alabama. Where all the other elements of prosperity exist, as they do in that rich new State, any quality and amount of labour might be obtained, and the permanent prosperity of the country might be secured. If matters go on as they are, Alabama will in time follow the course of the south-eastern States, and find her production of cotton declining; and she will have to learn a wiser husbandry by vicissitude. But matters will not go on as they are to that point. Cotton-growing is advancing rapidly in other parts of the world where there is the advantage of cheap, free labour; and the southern States of America will find themselves unable to withstand the competition of rivals whom they now despise, but by the use of free labour, and of the improved management which will accompany it. There is already a great importation of mules for field work from the higher western States. Who knows but that in time there may be cattle-shows, (like those of the more prosperous rural districts of the north,) where there are now slave markets; or at least agricultural societies, whereby the inhabitants may be put in the way of obtaining tender "sheep's meat," while cotton may be grown more plentifully than even at present?

I saw at Charleston the first great overt act of improvement that I am aware of in South Carolina. One step has been taken upwards; and when I saw it, I could only wish that the slaves in the neighbourhood could see, as clearly as a stranger could, the good it portended to them. It is nothing more than that an enterprising gentleman has set up a rice-mill, and that he avails himself to the utmost of its capabilities; but this is made much of in that land of small improvement; as it ought to be. The chaff is used to enrich the soil: and the proprietor has made lot after lot of bad land very profitable for sale with it, and is thus growing rapidly rich. The sweet flour, which lies between the husk and the grain, is used for fattening cattle. The broken rice is sold cheap; and the rest finds a good market. There are nine persons employed in the mill, some white and some black; and many more are busy in preparing the lots of land, and in building on them. Clusters of houses have risen up around the mill.

Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, present the extreme case of the fertility of the soil, the prosperity of proprietors, and the woes of slaves. I found the Virginians spoke with sorrow and contempt of the treatment of slaves in North and South Carolina: South Carolina and Georgia, of the treatment of slaves in the richer States to the west: and, in these last, I found the case too bad to admit of aggravation. It was in these last that the most heart-rending disclosures were made to me by the ladies, heads of families, of the state of society, and of their own intolerable sufferings in it. As I went further north again, I found an improvement. There was less wealth in the hands of individuals, a better economy, more intelligent slaves, and more discussion how to get rid of slavery. Tennessee is, in some sort, naturally divided on the question. The eastern part of the State is hilly, and fit for farming; for which slave labour does not answer. The western part is used for cotton-planting; and the planters will not yet hear of free labour. The magnificent State of Kentucky has no other drawback to its prosperity than slavery; and its inhabitants are so far convinced of this that they will, no doubt, soon free themselves from it. They cannot look across the river, and witness the prosperity of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, without being aware that, with their own unequalled natural advantages, they could not be so backward as they are, from any other cause.

Kentucky is equally adapted for agriculture and commerce. She may have ports on the rivers, along her whole northern and western boundary; and she has already roads superior to almost any in the United States. She is rich in stone, and many other minerals; in mineral waters, and in a soil of unsurpassed fertility. The State is more thickly settled than is evident to the passing traveller; and the effect will appear when more markets, or roads to existing markets, are opened. In one small county which I visited, my host and his brother had farms of fifteen hundred acres each; and there were two hundred and fifty other farms in the county. Sometimes these farms are divided among the children. More commonly, all the sons but one go elsewhere to settle. In this case, the homestead is usually left to the youngest son, who is supposed likely to be the most attached to the surviving parent.

The estates of the two brothers, mentioned above, comprising three thousand acres, were bought of the Indians for a rifle. We passed a morning in surveying the one which is a grazing farm. There is a good red-brick house for the family: and the slave-quarter is large. Nothing can be more beautiful than the aspect of the estate, from the richness of its vegetation, and the droves of fine cattle that were to be seen everywhere. I never saw finer cattle. The owner had just refused sixty dollars apiece for fourteen of them. Fifteen acres of the forest are left for shade; and there, and under single oaks in the cleared pasture, were herds of horses and mules, and three donkeys; the only ones I saw in the United States.

We passed an unshaded meadow, where the grass had caught fire every day at eleven o'clock, the preceding summer. This demonstrates the necessity of shade.

We passed "a spontaneous rye-field." I asked what "spontaneous" meant here; and found that a fine crop of rye had been cut the year before; and that the nearly equally fine one now before us had grown up from the dropped seed.

We enjoyed the thought of the abundance of milk here, after the dearth we had suffered in the South. Forty cows are milked for the use of the family and the negroes, and are under the care of seven women. The proprietor declared to me that he believed his slaves would drive him mad. Planters, who grow but one product, suffer much less from the incapacity and perverse will of their negroes: the care of stock is quite another matter; and for any responsible service, slaves are totally unfit.

Instead of living being cheaper on country estates, from the necessaries of life being raised on them, it appears to be much more expensive. This is partly owing to the prevailing pride of having negroes to show. One family, of four persons, of my acquaintance, in South Carolina, whose style of living might be called homely, cannot manage to live for less than three thousand dollars a year. They have a carriage and eleven negroes. It is cheaper in Kentucky. In the towns, a family may live in good style for two thousand five hundred dollars a year; and for no great deal more in the country. A family entered upon a good house, near a town, with one hundred and twenty acres of land, a few years ago, at a rent of three hundred dollars. They bought house and land, and brought their slaves, and now live, exclusive of rent and hire of servants, for two thousand dollars a year, in greater numbers and much higher style than the South Carolina family.

The prospects of agriculture in the States north-west of the Ohio are brilliant. The stranger who looks upon the fertile prairies of Illinois and Indiana, and the rich alluvions of Ohio, feels the iniquity of the English corn laws as strongly as in the alleys of Sheffield and Manchester. The inhuman perverseness of taxing food is there evident in all its enormity. The world ought never to hear of a want of food,--no one of the inhabitants of its civilised portions ought ever to be without the means of obtaining his fill, while the mighty western valley smiles in its fertility. If the aristocracy of England, for whom those laws were made, and by whom they are sustained, could be transported to travel, in open wagons, the boundless prairies, and the shores of the great rivers which would bring down the produce, they would groan to see from what their petty, selfish interests had shut out the thousands of half-starved labourers at home. If they could not be convinced of the very plain truth, of how their own fortunes would be benefited by allowing the supply and demand of food to take their natural course, they would, for the moment, wish their rent-rolls at the bottom of the sea, rather than that they should stand between the crowd of labourers and the supply of food which God has offered them. The landlords of England do not go and see the great western valley; but, happily, some of the labourers of England do. Far off as that valley is, those labourers will make themselves heard from thence, by those who have driven them there; and will teach the brethren whom they have left behind where the blame of their hunger lies. Every British settler who ploughs a furrow in the prairie, helps to plough up the foundations of the British Corn Laws.

There is a prospect, not very uncertain or remote, of these prairie lands bringing relief to a yet more suffering class than either English labourers or landlords; the sugar-growing slaves of the south. Rumours of the progress of sugar-making from beet in France have, for some time past, been interesting many persons in the United States; especially capitalists inclined to speculate, and the vigilant friends of the slave. Information has been obtained, and some trials made. Individuals have sown ten acres and upwards each, and manufactured sugar with a small apparatus. The result has been encouraging; and a large manufactory was to be opened in Philadelphia on the 1st of November last. Two large joint-stock companies have been founded, one in New Jersey and the other in Illinois. Their proceedings have been quickened by the frosts of several successive seasons, which have so cut off the canes in the south, as that it cannot supply one quarter of the domestic consumption: whereas it had previously supplied half. Some of the southern newspapers have recommended the substitution of beet for canes. However soon this may be done, the northern sugar planters, with their free labour, will surely overpower the south in the competition. This is on the supposition that beet will answer as well as canes; a supposition which will have Bern granted whenever the south begins to grow beet in preference to canes.

A heavy blow would be inflicted on slavery by the success of the beet companies. The condition of the cane-growing slaves cannot be made worse than it is. I believe that even in the West Indies it has never been so dreadful as at present in some parts of Louisiana. A planter stated to a sugar-refiner in New York, that it was found the best economy to _work off_ the stock of negroes once in seven years.

The interest excited by this subject of beet-growing is very strong throughout the United States. Some result must ensue which will be an instigation to further action. The most important would be the inducing in the south either the use of free labour in sugar-growing, or the surrender of an object so fatal to decent humanity.

The prettiest amateur farm I saw was that of the late Dr. Hosack, at Hyde Park, on the Hudson. Dr. Hosack had spared no pains to improve his stock, and his methods of farming, as well as the beauty of his pleasure-grounds. His merits in the former departments the agricultural societies in England are much better qualified to appreciate than I; and they seem to have valued his exertions; to judge by the medals and other honourable testimonials from them which he showed to me. As for his pleasure-grounds, little was left for the hand of art to do. The natural terrace above the river, green, sweeping, and undulating, is surpassingly beautiful. Dr. Hosack's good taste led him to leave it alone, and to spend his pains on the gardens and conservatory behind. Of all the beautiful country-seats on the Hudson, none can, I think, equal Hyde Park; though many bear a more imposing appearance from the river.

Though I twice traversed the western part of the State of New York, I did not see the celebrated farm of Mr. Wadsworth; the finest, by all accounts, in the United States. The next best thing to seeing it was hearing Mr. Wadsworth talk about it,--especially of its hospitable capabilities. This only increased my regret at being unable to visit it.

The most remarkable order of land-owners that I saw in the United States was that of the Shakers and the Rappites; both holding all their property in common, and both enforcing celibacy. The interest which would be felt by the whole of society in watching the results of a community of property is utterly destroyed by the presence of the other distinction; or rather of the ignorance and superstition of which it is the sign.

The moral and economical principles of these societies ought to be most carefully distinguished by the observer. This being done, I believe it will be found that whatever they have peculiarly good among them is owing to the soundness of their economical principles; whatever they have that excites compassion, is owing to the badness of their moral arrangements.

I visited two Shaker communities in Massachusetts. The first was at Hancock, consisting of three hundred persons, in the neighbourhood of another at Lebanon, consisting of seven hundred persons. There are fifteen Shaker establishments or "families" in the United States, and their total number is between five and six thousand. There is no question of their entire success, as far as wealth is concerned. A very moderate amount of labour has secured to them in perfection all the comforts of life that they know how to enjoy, and as much wealth besides as would command the intellectual luxuries of which they do not dream. The earth does not show more flourishing fields, gardens, and orchards, than theirs. The houses are spacious, and in all respects unexceptionable. The finish of every external thing testifies to their wealth, both of material and leisure. The floor of their place of worship, (the scene of their peculiar exercises,) the roofs of their houses, their stair-carpets, the feet of their chairs, the springs of their gates, and their spitting-boxes,--for even these neat people have spitting-boxes--show a nicety which is rare in America. Their table fare is of the very best quality. We had depended on a luncheon among them, and were rather alarmed at the refusal we met, when we pleaded our long ride and the many hours that we should have to wait for refreshment, if they would not furnish us with some. They urged, reasonably enough, that a steady rule was necessary, subject as the community was to visits from the company at Lebanon Springs. They did not want to make money by furnishing refreshments, and did not desire the trouble. For once, however, they kindly gave way; and we were provided with delicious bread, molasses, butter, cheese and wine; all homemade, of course. If happiness lay in bread and butter, and such things, these people have attained the _summum bonum_. Their store shows what they can produce for sale. A great variety of simples, of which they sell large quantities to London; linen-drapery, knitted wares, sieves, baskets, boxes, and confectionary; palm and feather fans, pin-cushions, and other such trifles; all these may be had in some variety, and of the best quality. If such external provision, with a great amount of accumulated wealth besides, is the result of co-operation and community of property among an ignorant, conceited, inert society like this, what might not the same principles of association achieve among a more intelligent set of people, stimulated by education, and exhilarated by the enjoyment of all the blessings which Providence has placed within the reach of man?

The wealth of the Shakers is not to be attributed to their celibacy. They are receiving a perpetual accession to their numbers from among the "world's people," and these accessions are usually of the most unprofitable kind. Widows with large families of young children, are perpetually joining the community, with the view of obtaining a plentiful subsistence with very moderate labour. The increase of their numbers does not lead to the purchase of more land. They supply their enlarged wants by the high cultivation of the land they have long possessed; and the superfluity of capital is so great that it is difficult to conceive what will be done with it by a people so nearly dead to intellectual enjoyments. If there had been no celibacy among them, they would probably have been far more wealthy than they are; the expenses of living in community being so much less, and the produce of co-operative labour being so much greater than in a state of division into families. The truth of these last positions can be denied by none who have witnessed the working of a co-operative system. The problem is to find the principle by which all shall be induced to labour their share. Any such principle being found, the wealth of the community follows of course.

Whether any principle to this effect can be brought to bear upon any large class of society in the old world, is at present the most important dispute, perhaps, that is agitating society. It will never now rest till it has been made matter of experiment. If a very low principle has served the purpose, for a time at least, in the new world, there seems much ground for expectation that a far higher one may be found to work as well in the more complicated case of English society. There is, at least, every encouragement to try. While there are large classes of people here whose condition can hardly be made worse; while the present system (if such it may be called) imposes care on the rich, excessive anxiety on the middle classes, and desperation on the poor: while the powerful are thus, as it were, fated to oppress; the strivers after power to circumvent and counteract; and the powerless to injure, it seems only reasonable that some section, at least, of this warring population should make trial of the peaceful principles which are working successfully elsewhere. The co-operative methods of the Shakers and Rappites might be tried without any adoption of their spiritual pride and cruel superstition. These are so far from telling against the system, that they prompt the observer to remark how much has been done in spite of such obstacles.

There must be something sound in the principles on which these people differ from the rest of the world, or they would not work at all; but the little that is vital is dreadfully encumbered with that which is dead. Like all religious persuasions from which one differs, that of the Shakers appears more reasonable in conversation, and in their daily actions, than on paper and at a distance. In actual life, the absurd and peculiar recedes before the true and universal; but, I own, I have never witnessed more visible absurdity than in the way of life of the Shakers. The sound part of their principle is the same as that which has sustained all devotees; and with it is joined a spirit of fellowship which makes them more in the right than the anchorites and friars of old. This is all. Their spiritual pride, their insane vanity, their intellectual torpor, their mental grossness, are melancholy to witness. Reading is discouraged among them. Their thoughts are full of the one subject of celibacy: with what effect, may be easily imagined. Their religious exercises are disgustingly full of it. It cannot be otherwise: for they have no other interesting subject of thought beyond their daily routine of business; no objects in life, no wants, no hopes, no novelty of experience whatever. Their life is all dull work and no play.

The women, in their frightful costume, close opaque caps, and drab gowns of the last degree of tightness and scantiness, are nothing short of disgusting. They are averse to the open air and exercise; they are pallid and spiritless. They look far more forlorn and unnatural than the men. Their soulless stare at us, before their worship began, was almost as afflicting as that of the lowest order of slaves; and, when they danced, they were like so many galvanised corpses. I had been rather afraid of not being able to keep my countenance during this part of their worship; but there was no temptation to laugh. It was too shocking for ridicule. Three men stood up, shouting a monotonous tune, and dangling their crossed hands, with a pawing motion, to keep time, while the rest danced, except some old women and young children, who sat out. The men stamped, and the women jerked, with their arms hanging by their sides; they described perpetually the figure of a square; the men and boys on one side, the women and girls on the other. There were prayers besides, and singing, and a sermon. This last was of a better quality than usual, I understood. It was (of all improbable subjects) on religious liberty, and contained nothing outrageously uncommon, except the proposition that the American revolution had drawn the last of the teeth of the red dragon.

It is not to be supposed that the children who are carried in by their widowed, or indolent, or poor, or superstitious parents, are always acquiescent in their destination. I saw many a bright face within the prim cap-border, which bore a prophecy of a return to the world; and two of the boys stamped so vigorously in the dance, that it was impossible to imagine their feelings to be very devotional. The story of one often serves as an index to the hearts of many. I knew of a girl who was carried into a Shaker community by her widowed mother, and subjected early to its discipline. It was hateful to her. One Sunday, when she was, I believe, about sixteen, she feigned illness, to avoid going to worship. When she believed every one else gone, she jumped out of a low window, and upon the back of a pony which happened to be in the field. She rode round and round the enclosure, without saddle or bridle, and then re-entered the house. She had been observed, and was duly reprimanded. She left the community in utter weariness and disgust. A friend of mine, in a neighbouring village, took the girl into her service. She never settled well in service, being too proud for the occupation; and she actually went back to the same community, and is there still, for no better reason than the saving of her pride. Her old teachers had, it thus appeared, obtained an influence over her, notwithstanding the tyranny of their discipline; and it had not been of a wholesome moral nature. But no more words are necessary to show how pride, and all other selfishness, must flourish in a community which religiously banishes all the tenderest charities of life.

The followers of Mr. Rapp are settled at Economy, on the Ohio, eighteen miles below Pittsburgh. Their number was five hundred when I was there; and they owned three thousand acres of land. Much of their attention seems to be given to manufactures. They rear silkworms, and were the earliest silk-weavers in the United States. At my first visit they were weaving only a flimsy kind of silk handkerchief; last summer I brought away a piece of substantial, handsome black satin. They have sheep-walks, and a large woollen manufactory. Their factory was burnt down in 1834; the fire occasioning a loss of sixty thousand dollars; a mere trifle to this wealthy community. Their vineyards, corn-fields, orchards, and gardens gladden the eye. There is an abundance so much beyond their need that it is surprising that they work; except for want of something else to do. The Dutch love of flowers was visible in the plants that were to be seen in the windows, and the rich carnations and other sweets that bloomed in the garden and green-house. The whole place has a superior air to that of either of the Shaker "families" that I saw. The women were better dressed; more lively, less pallid; but, I fear, not much wiser. Mr. Rapp exercises an unbounded influence over his people. They are prevented learning any language but German, and are not allowed to converse with strangers. The superintendent keeps a close watch over them in this respect. Probationers must serve a year before they can be admitted: and the managers own that they dread the entrance of young people, who might be "unsettled;" that is, not sufficiently subservient.

I was curious to learn how five hundred persons could be kept in the necessary subjection by one. Mr. Rapp's means are such that his task is not very difficult. He keeps his people ignorant; and he makes them vain. He preaches to them their own superiority over the rest of the world so incessantly that they fully believe it; and are persuaded that their salvation is in his hands. At first I felt, with regard both to them and the Shakers, a strong respect for the self-conquest which could enable them to endure the singularity,--the one community, of its non-intercourse with strangers; the other, of its dancing exhibitions; but I soon found that my respect was misplaced. One and all, they glory in the singularity. They feel no awkwardness in it, from first to last. This vanity is the handle by which they are worked.

Mr. Rapp is now very old. His son is dead. It remains to be seen what will become of his community, with its immense accumulation of wealth, when it has lost its dictator. It does not appear that they can go on in their present state without a dictator. They smile superciliously upon Mr. Owen's plan, as admitting "a wrong principle,"--marriage. The best hope for them is that they will change their minds on this point, admitting the educational improvements which will arise out of the change, and remaining in community with regard to property. This is the process now in action among the seceders from their body, settled on the opposite bank of the river, a short distance below Economy.

These seceders were beguiled by Count Leon, a stranger, who told the people a great deal that was true about Mr. Rapp, and a great deal that was false about himself. It is a great pity that Count Leon was a swindler; for he certainly opened the eyes of the Economy people to many truths, and might have done all that was wanted, if he had himself been honest. He drew away seventy of the people, and instigated them to demand of Mr. Rapp their share of the accumulated property. It was refused: and a suit was instituted against Mr. Rapp, in whose name the whole is invested. The lawyers compromised the affair, and Mr. Rapp disbursed 120,000 dollars. Count Leon obtained, and absconded with almost the whole, and died in Texas; the burial-place of many more such men. With the remnant of their funds, the seventy seceders purchased land, and settled themselves opposite to Beaver, on the Ohio. They live in community, but abjuring celibacy; and have been joined by some thorough-bred Americans. It will be seen how they prosper.

Though the members of these remarkable communities are far from being the only agriculturists in whom the functions of proprietor and labourer are joined, the junction is in them so peculiar as to make them a separate class, holding a place between the landowners of whom I have before spoken, and the labourers of whom I shall have to treat.