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dress; affectation of behaviour; self-importance; studied eccentricity of conduct; the want of gentle ness and patience; and, lastly, a spirit of coldness and selfishness, which is very apt to find its way into the human heart, wherever persons are placed in a somewhat insulated position, or thrown upon their own resources under circumstances unfavourable for the growth of the social and domestic charities. A CONSTANT READER.

REMARKS DURING A JOURNEY
THROUGH NORTH AMERICA.

(Continued from page 23.)

Norfolk (Virginia), Dec. 12, 1820. As engagements of various kinds begin to thicken upon me previously to embarking, and I have little chance of any opportunity of writing to you as I wish, I must continue to snatch little intervals as they present themselves, and write to you as I can.

You are already in possession of Our " personal narrative" to a late date. I will now continue my remarks, scanty and superficial as I know they are, on the subject of emigration. I do not recollect that I omitted any thing at all material which occurredtome, duringmy hasty progress through the country, with respect to the inducements offered to the poorer classes, who are anxious to obtain a little land, from which they may derive a subsistence for their families by personal exertion. On the more difficult subject of the advantages which agriculturists, with a capital of a few thousand pounds, would derive from coming to this country, I shall enter with greater reluctance; because it is one in the minutiae of which I feel still less at home, although I have taken pains to obtain such information as would lead me to conclusions on which I could rely. The fact is, that of the more recent settlements, (even of those less remote than Mr. Birkbeck's,)

little is known on the coast, and the accounts which you receive from casual visitors are usually as vague and inaccurate as those derived from persons interested are exaggerated and partial. Opinions respecting all the settlements, it is easy enough to collect; but facts, on which to found opinions entitled to any consideration, it is extremely difficult to obtain.

I have met with two persons only who have actually been at Mr. Birk beck's settlement; one in the course of the last summer, the other less than eight weeks since. They both state, that he has now a very comfortable house, excellent fences, and from 60 to 80 acres of Indian corn; but that he has raised little or no wheat, finding it more desirable, on the whole, to purchase flour at Harmony, eighteen miles distant.

I have not Mr. Birkbeck's book before me to refer to, in order to see whether this is his third or fourth year; but, in either case, the result differs so widely from his anticipations, as to render it difficult for him to elude the charge of being a wild and sanguine specu lator.

In one of his estimates, he states the following as the quantity of produce which a settler on 640 acres, may expect to raise in the first four years :1st year, 100 acres of Indian corn. 2d year, 100 ditto ditto.

3d year,

100

ditto

Wheat.

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4th year, 200

200 ditto Wheat.

This estimate was made not later, I believe, at any rate than in 1817, (you can refer to his book); and yet in the autumn of 1820, he has little or no wheat, and only 60 or 80 acres of Indian corn, though pos and resources, more than the aversessing unquestionably, in his skill age advantages of new settlers, and stimulated to extraordinary exertions by a regard to his reputation.

So much for quantity. With respect to price, in his estimate of profit, he takes wheat at seventy-five, and Indian corn at forty, cents per bushel. I cannot hear of any actual sales on the Wabash, to fix the prices on the spot; but in both Kentucky and Ohio, wheat is at twenty-five to thirty-three, and Indian corn at twelve and a half, cents per bushel: while the fact that he regards it as more desirable to buy and transport flour eighteen miles, than to raise it at home, furnishes a strong presumption that he can derive little profit from its cultivation. The gentleman whom I mentioned, as being there a few weeks since, told me that Mr. Birkbeck was preparing to sow a little wheat this winter; but that he regarded grazing as the most profitable object of his future attention. Of the price of labour, and of foreign articles of domestic economy, I could obtain no satisfactory information. I lately met a gentleman who has been travelling extensively through the western country. He did not visit Mr. Birkbeck's settlement, but saw two English families returning from it sickly and debilitated; their inability to preserve their health there being, as they alleged, their principal reason for leaving the colony. He also met an English gentleman of property who had been to examine the place, with a view of taking his family thither: he said, the sight of it, and a conviction that it was unhealthy, decided him at once to relinquish the idea; that he considered the selection a most unfortunate one for Mr. Birkbeck, and that the number of the colonists did not exceed two hundred.

I have heard others speak rather favourably of the healthiness of Mr. Birkbeck's particular spot, to which his draining-fences will contribute; but all represent Illinois in general as a most unhealthy State, where the people for the most part are pallid and emaciated, and ex

hibit the languor and apathy which follow frequent or long-continued intermittents.

I became sadly too familiar with this melancholy spectacle on my south-western route: scarcely one family in six in extensive districts in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, being exempt from fever and ague; and many of them exhibiting tall young men of eighteen to thirty moving feebly about the house, completely unfitted for exertion, after fifteen or eighteen months' residence, or rendered indolent or inefficient for the rest of their lives. In Georgia and Carolina, we were told in a jocular way, that it was not uncommon for a person who was invited to dinner on a particular day, Wednesday for instance, to begin reckoning "Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday

No; I cannot come to you on Wednesday, for that is my feverday."-The two gentlemen who had visited Mr. Birkbeck agreed in stating, what has often been denied, that he has a well of excellent water.

On the whole, I am disposed to think that Mr. Birkbeck's sanguine anticipations have been grievously disappointed, and would have been proved by the result to have been extravagant, independently of recent changes in the circumstances of the country. At the same time, I have no doubt that even his present views of his situation and prospects, moderated as they must be by his past experience, embrace advantages which in his estimate far outweigh the privations and sacrifices attending his removal hither, and lead him still to congratulate himself warmly on his change of country. And, indeed, in possession of all the substantial comforts of physical life; removed beyond the sphere of those invidious comparisons which would render him sensible to artificial wants; exempt from present anxieties, and with a reasonable prospect of leaving every member of his family in

dependent and prosperous, his situation, in a worldly paint of view, is a very comfortable one. I am inclined however to think, that independently of his ambition to found a colony, and his apparent anxiety while on the move to get as far as possible from his native countryan anxiety for which true English feeling finds it difficult to account he might have invested his property in some of the Atlantic States, with as much or more advantage to at least one or two generations of his family, and with a far less sacrifice of present comfort. Should his family, however, retain any large quantity of land, a growing density of population in the western country, and even in Illinois, notwithstanding its present unhealthiness, may render it a source of wealth in future years.

In the ordinary course of things, without an European market, agricultural profits in this country must be extremely small; among other reasons, because so large a proportion of the population, compared with most other countries, will be land proprietors, and so small a proportion dependent on others for their agricultural produce; and because the great fertility of the soil will leave an unusually large supply, after maintaining the labourers employed in its cultivation. It appears to me that the natural tendency of this state of things among an industrious and enterprizing people, is to encourage domestic manufactures; I mean manufactures really domestic-made in the family-the produce of that labour which higher agricultural profits would retain in the field, but which there appears to be no inducement to employ in the cultivation of produce which will sell for little or nothing when raised. This is a species of manufacture in a great measure independent for its prosperity on governments or tariffs; for it is of little importance to the small farmer, that foreign

manufactures are tolerably low, if his produce will neither command them, nor money to buy them. He can obtain his clothing in exchange for his leisure hours; but then it must be by employing those hours in actually making his clothing, and not through the intervention of agricultural produce. I am surprised to find to how great an extent this species of manufactures is carried, and how rapidly the events of the last two years have increased it. In some parts of the State of New York, I was told the little farmers could not make a living without it. In Pennsylvania, it is perhaps still more general; some of the lower descriptions of East India goods having almost entirely given place to a domestic substitute actually made in the family; and the importations of Irish linens having been most seriously checked by the greatly increased cultivation and manufacture of flax in the immediate vicinity of Philadelphia. In Virginia and North Carolina, I had opportunities of seeing these domestic manufactures as I passed in the stage; and on my horseback route it was a constant source of surprise-to you I may add, without danger of being suspected to be a Radical, and of gratification; for this combination of agriculture and manufacture in the same family appears to me to form a state of society of all others the best adapted to produce a happy, independent, and domestic population. If I mistake not, America will exhibit this combination in a greater degree than any nation with which I am acquainted, unless the permanent removal of our corn laws should give a new stimulus to her agricultural labour; and even then, the immensity of her fertile territory might enable her to supply our wants without checking her in any material degree in the career I have anticipated for her. But I did not intend to enter on these speculations. I have sometimes wished

you could see what a pretty family picture a mother and two daughters make; the mother spinning, and keeping a daughter on each side most actively occupied in cardingfor her. -In the hope that this picture will play around your imagination, and lead you to forget how dry a letter you have been reading, I will conclude for the present, especially as I am arriving at the end of my paper. I intend, if I have time, that another letter shall accompany this.

Norfolk (Virginia), Dec. 13, 1820. The little digression into which I was insensibly led in my letter of yesterday, prevented me from completing my remarks on Mr. Birkbeck. I have already mentioned some of my reasons for supposing that, in the ordinary course of things, agricultural profits will be generally low in this country. Nor am I aware of any peculiarities in Mr. Birkbeck's situation which would form an exception in his favour in this particular. It must not be forgotten, that while the imminent danger of flour turning sour at New Orleans, his principal market, is to be set against the advantages he may possess over the farmers in the Atlantic States, in bis competition with the graziers of Ohio, his greater distance from the Atlantic cities may more than counterbalance the benefit of a readier access to extensive prairies. At present I am told, that the expense of conveying flour from Illinois, and selling it at New Orleans, would leave little or nothing for the grower of the wheat; and I have been assured, on the authority of several persons who have passed through Kentucky and Ohio this autumn, that in many cases the farmers would not cut their wheat, but turned their cattle into it; and that in others, the tenants would hardly accept of the landlord's moiety of the produce which they had stipulated to give him for rent.

Mr. Mellish, the traveller and

geographer, whom I frequently saw in Philadelphia, shewed me a letter from Mr. Birkbeck, in which he says; "There is an error of some importance in my Letters; and I wish that a correction of it could accompany the publication. In my estimate of the expenses of culti vating these prairies, I have not made sufficient allowance of time for the innumerable delays which attend a new establishment in a new country. I would now add to the debtor side a year of prepara tion, which will of course make a material deduction from the profits at the commencement of the undertaking."

On the whole, I am disposed to believe that experience will suggest to Mr. Birkbeck some mode of making money, though far more slowly than he expected; and I think the general estimate of the merits of his situation, by the natural reaction of his exaggerated statements, is at present a little below the truth.

I should not be surprised if a new and extensive market were gradually opened to the western farmers among a population employed or created by manufacturing establishments beyond the mountains. Wool may be raised on the spot with tolerable facility; and I have already mentioned the low rate of freight at which, in Ohio, they can obtain cotton from Louisiana and Mississippi in exchange for wheat, which will scarcely grow at all in the southern countries.

As the Waltham factory, near Boston, can sustain itself so well against foreign competition, I do not know why cotton mills should not flourish in Ohio, where mill seats are numerous and excellent, provisions low, labour moderate, and the protection contemplated by the duty on foreign articles increased by distance from the coast. Hitherto capital has been wanted, commerce and land-speculations absorbing all that could be begged or borrowed; but the India trade

is at present discouraging, the land mania has partly subsided, and money is readily to be had on good security at five per cent.

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From what I hear of Ohio, I know of no place where a young, enterprizing, skilful cotton-spinner with from 5000l. to 15,000/. capital, fond of farming, and exempt from those delicate sensibilities which would make his heart yearn to wards the land of his nativity, would pass his time more to his mind, or be in a fairer way of realizing a large fortune. To the mere farmer or agriculturist also, I should consider it an inviting State. I was told by the late governor of Ohio-one of the earliest settlers in that State, and for many years one of its representatives in Congress, a very active, intelligent man, with whom I have already made you acquainted-that unimproved land is to be had at 1 to 2 dollars per acre, for good quality; improved with buildings, and pretty good, 6 dollars; and 20 to 30 dollars for the best in the country. He considers that farming capital, well managed by a practical hard-working farmer, assisted by his family, produces six to nine per cent. at the low prices of 12 cents for Indian corn, and 25 cents for wheat, and fifteen to twenty per cent. at 25 cents for Indian corn, and 50 cents for wheat. I should imagine this was too high a return to calculate upon where labourers were to be hired, and the capital large; but he seem ed to say it was not, and added, that grazing would pay much better interest, the cattle being sold to drivers who come for them. In the remote forests of the Mississippi, I met drovers from Philadelphia, with herds of cattle which they had purchased from the In dians 1000 or 1200 miles from their destined markets.

I asked a very respectable and intelligent resident in Ohio, how he would recommend an Englishman, coming to settle in that State as

a farmer, to employ his 50001. supposing that to be his capital. He said he would purchase a farm and stock with 500l., leave 20007. in government or bank securities bearing interest to bring in a certain income, and the remaining 25001., he would invest judiciously in land to be left to improve in value as a speculation. On this last, he would venture to underwrite a profit of 100 per cent. in ten years, asking no other premium than the excess above 100 per cent. Many bargains are now daily offering. He said, if a person vested 1000l. in a farm and stock, and in making his house comfortable, 2000l. in government securities, yielding six per cent. interest, and 20001. in land to lie idle, improving in value; the six per cent, which he might safely calculate on making from his farm, besides maintaining his family on its produce, added to the six per cent. for his 2000l. in money securities-together 180/.would enable him to keep a carriage and two horses and three servants, and to enjoy many of the comforts of life. This, too, I consider highly coloured, after making every allowance for the difference between his estimate of comforts and ours. His would probably exclude wine, and tea, and coffee; or at least his coffee would probably be pale enough when every pound cost one or two bushels of wheat. English ideas also as to clothes, even on a peace-establishment in the western wilds, and still more as to education, would probably differ widely from those of my informant. The expense of a good boarding school or seminary" for boys or girls (in this country they have as few schools as shops, except Sunday-schools, though as many seminaries and academies as stores,) is 351. per annum, near Chillicothe. He has some of his family at school on these terms; and I think he said that at the female " "seminary" Latin was taught, if desired. In dress and

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