tracts of land have been spread before a fearless, enterprising, and energetic race, almost without money and without price. The choicest lands of the western valleys have been at the command of every man; and they have flocked thither to enjoy them, not only from our own Atlantic states, but the islands of Britain and the distant countries of Europe have poured forth their thousands to occupy and subdue the prairies of the west. The census returns of the United States show, that of the increase of the population since 1820, 80 per cent. are agriculturists; the remaining 20 per cent. are engaged in commerce, mining, manufactures, and trades. This is the reverse of that process which has been going on in England, and also in Europe. The same causes which have operated so powerfully in England to cause the demand for food to outrun the local supply, have also been actively at work in diminishing that surplus supply in Europe to which England formerly looked to make good her own occasional deficits. These causes are the powerful impulses that have been given to manufacturing industry, by which the number of agricultural producers has been diminished and the consumers increased. The former have also been lessened by the number of agricultural emigrants who leave the worn-out lands and the profitless servitude of noble owners in Europe to tread their own prolific farms in the western valleys of America. The countries of Europe during the past year, which has indeed been one of bad harvests, have not yielded more than sufficient for their own wants. The surplus of one section has not more than sufficed for the deficit of another; and, although the demands of England, which subsequent to 1837 were annually large, were last year small, the price of grain throughout Europe has been higher than perhaps ever before, and grain is now much cheaper in the United States than in any other country; that is to say, in the great grain markets of the north of Europe for May, the price of wheat averaged $1.40 per bushel, and in New-York 90 cents. At Odessa, the great centre of the Black Sea grain trade, it was $1.00 per bushel, and the demand good to supply the wants of Italy and the Mediterranean.

Not only has the demand for food increased with the progress of manufactures and the extension of railroads throughout Europe, but the application of capital and science to agriculture, and the improvement in implements, have been insufficient to compensate for the decay of the land. -The constant and long cropping of the best lands in the wheat districts of Europe has, united to a barbarous system of culture, reduced them to a state of comparative sterility. It has long been known that the continued exportation of corn from any country will exhaust the soil, unless there is imported in return articles which may be converted into manure in some degree to compensate for the injuries so inflicted. Many parts of the north of Africa and of Asia-Minor that were formerly depended upon by Europe for large supplies of grain, are now irretrievable deserts. The system pursued in Prussia and Poland, of raising two crops of corn in succession, administering nothing to refresh the soil but a fallow, will ultimately exhaust the best land. For near two centuries Poland has continued to export large quantities of bread-stuffs, without receiving from abroad anything that could be converted into nutriment for the soil. The quantities exported, for periods of 25 years each, with the price at the close of each period, in Dantzic has been as follows:

About three-fourths of the exports of Dantzic are to England, the remainder goes to the other countries of Europe. This is the point whence one-half the imports into England have been drawn in the last 20 years. The wheat exported from Dantzic, forming one-half of the English supply in years of deficient harvest, is delivered there from the river Vistula and its tributary the Bug. The former rises in the Carpathian mountains, and flows 450 miles through Poland and West Prussia, joining the Baltic at Dantzic. The stream becomes navigable at Cracow, and thence the wheat is conveyed to the sea in open flat boats, which hold 1,200 bushels. These boats are, in seasons of leisure, constructed on the banks of the Vistula, above the reach of the water, of fir, rudely put together and fastened with wooden tree-nails. When the rains of Autumn, or the vernal sun melts the snows of the mountains, the river rises, and the boats are easily floated. A large tree running along the bottom and roughly cut forms the keelson, to which timbers are secured; it rises some ten inches from the floor; across this and extending to the sides, hurdles are laid, covered with mats of rye straw, which serve for dunnage. The space below receives the water which rains or leaks in above and below. The wheat is thrown in on these mats, piled as high as the gunwale, and without further ceremony proceeds on its voyage, carried along by the force of the stream. A small boat precedes, with a man in it, sounding to avoid shifting shoals. In this way the barge, conducted by six or seven men, occupies several weeks and sometimes months in its passage. The rain falling upon the exposed wheat soon causes it to grow, and the shooting fibres form a thick mat that serves as a protection to the remainder of the cargo. When the wheat is delivered at Dantzic the boat is broken up, and the men return home on foot. The grown covering of the wheat is removed, and the bulk spread out on the land to dry, being thrown in heaps as often as necessary to protect it from falling rain. After the lapse of some time and frequent handlings it becomes fit for storing in warehouses well constructed for that purpose.

The wheat, however, becomes

so deteriorated in quality that nearly one-fourth is unmarketable. This is the manner in which one-half the English supply from Europe is conveyed to the points of exportation. The mode of culture is not more praiseworthy, being of a rude and primitive description. The fertility of the lands of Prussia, under the care even of skilful, affluent, and productive proprietors, was not equal in the best localities to seven-fold the seed, and in very many portions three-fold; that is, six bushels reaped for two bushels sown per acre. In Poland the product may be seven fold in some cases. As an instance of the cost of producing grain in Prussia and Poland, a paper prepared by Mr. Rothe, president of government of Dantzic, and laid before Parliament, states, that in a year of favorable sales of grain, the produce of an estate of 2,018 acres, of which 1,040 acres were cultivated with grain, sold on the spot at 72 cents per bushel, by which a loss of 20 per cent. was sustained, besides rent. The actual cost of that wheat delivered in London is $1 29 cents per bushel, without yielding any profit whatever to producers. In France the average yield of wheat per acre is 14 bushels, according to the returns of the Minister of Commerce. In England it is about 20 bushels.

The countries of Spain, France, Belgium, and Great Britain, are corn-importing countries. In France the excess of import over export, which last was mostly to Algiers, averaged, for eight successive years, 681,266 bushels grain per annum, and in some years the import is much larger. No country in Europe approaches France in the extent of surface appropriated to the wheat culture. More than twofifths of the tillable surface of France is cultivated with wheat; that is to say, of every 100 cultivated acres, 40 are sowed with wheat. The quantity of land thus employed is greater in the south-western departments than at the north; yet the acreable product is greater in the latter sections, a result ascribable both to superior cultivation and greater fertility. In the aggregate, the quantity of wheat produced in France is greater than that produced in Belgium, Spain, Holland, Prussia, Poland, Sweden and the British islands. The crop

is usually to the seed as 64 to 1. The consumption of wheat is also greater than in any of the other countries. The internal transportation is so costly and difficult, that prices vary very considerably in different sections, being always higher at the south than at the north, from the circumstance of greater fertility. The operation of rail-roads will probably equalize the prices while it will enhance the consumption of the whole. Notwithstanding the great fertility of France, and its great production of wheat, aided by protective corn-laws, it is generally a wheat-importing country. Its agricultural resources, by the aid of science and industry, may be developed almost indefinitely to meet its increasing wants, if enterprise is stimulated by competition instead of being smothered with parchment laws. To effect this, however, a great social revolution in the rural districts is first necessary. Belgium and Holland suspended their corn laws in October last, to allow of the free import of food to supply the deficit occasioned by her late bad harvests. The Russian country bordering on the Black Sea, has of late years sent forth considerable quantities of grain, and the trade in that article has made Odessa a place of importance. This year, however, Italy and the Mediterranean countries require all that it can spare at very advanced rates. Throughout Europe, therefore, the general features are decreasing productions of the land, and an increasing consumption of food, by which double operation the surplus of the most agricultural countries is yearly diminishing, while the wants of the corn-importing countries are annually becoming greater.

It is not a little singular that, while such is the actual state of affairs, each country has made laws prohibitory of the import of corn from others, on the plea, as expressed by the report of a committee of the French Chamber of Deputies, that if wheat were introduced without duty from the Baltic or Black Sea, our maritime shores would remain uncultivated, and the affect of a ruinous competition would effect more and more nearly the whole of our agricultural population." It is difficult to conceive how absurdities so gross can be gravely put forth by a body of men

pretending to ordinary intelligence, much less to the government of a great nation. All the countries of Europe enacted similar laws on the same plea. Whence, then, would the corn necessary to produce that ruinous effect be derived, if all those sagacious laws were repealed or suspended, as is now the case in Belgium? Which of all the counries that now raise grain under protective laws, would be endowed with such prolific crops through the repeal of laws by various countries? According to a resolution of both houses of Parliament, communications were made from the British consuls residing in the corn countries, respecting the quantity of corn that might be exported from each. The result, from all the countries of Europe, north, south and east, was 2,222464 quarters, or 17,179,712 bushels. The consumption of wheat in Great Britian for food and seed, has been estimated at 9 bushels per head. In France probably it is not more than 5 bushels. At this rate, if the whole quantity, as stated by the consuls, could be regularly furnished, of good quality and at present prices, it would supply but two weeks consumption to France and England alone at this moment, without taking into consideration the wants of other countries. Yet statesmen will declare that the removal of heavy duties will create sufficient wheat to throw out of cultivation the maritime shores of fertile countries. The whole export from Dantzic, as given in the above table, for 196 years, is equal only to 12 months consumption for the present population of England. The increase of the population of Great Britain in the last ten years, has been 2,300,000 souls, which requires 20,700, 000 bushels more wheat per annum, to feed them. While this increase has taken place, the exports from the wheat countries of Europe has diminished and the prices advanced, until they are now not materially less than in England. The quantity of wheat which can be exported from Europe, is best tested by the effect which a moderate demand produces upon prices. The effect of high prices for any continued period, is to stimulate production and produce a reaction and fall in prices, even although the demand which first occasioned the advance should be continued. When, therefore, a demand to

a given extent springs up, and being continued for any number of years, is not followed by a decline in prices, but rather the contrary, that circumstance furnishes almost irrefragable testimony that the demand is more than can readily be supplied. This evidence is furnished in the case of the English demand and its effect upon European prices during the last 16 years, a period sufficiently long to test the full effect of alternate good harvests and deficits in England upon the European trade. During the four years ending with 1832 the harvests of England were bad, and she imported annually 9,326,390 bushels of wheat. During the whole of that four years, the price ruled at the five leading corn-markets of the continent, at an average of 35s. per quarter, or $1,05 cents per bushel. From 1832, the five consecutive years ending with 1837, were of good harvests, and England imported 341,695 bushels per annum only. The average for wheat in those five years at the same ports on the continent, was 23s. per quarter, or 70 cents per bushel. In the year 1838 England imported 14,550,624 bushels, and the average of the continent rose to 38s. per quarter, or $1 14 cents per bushel. Now it is fair to infer that the low prices of the five years ending with 1837, must have ruined many corn growers, bankrupted many estates, and reduced the quantity of corn produced. The 14,550,000 bushels taken by England, however, appear to have exhausted the stocks in the warehouses, and raised the price 80 per cent. all over Europe. That stimulus would naturally again enhance the production. In the next year, 1839, England took near 22 million bushels, and the average price in Europe rose to 42s. per quarter, or $1 26 cents per bushel. That price was continued down to 1843, and the average for the five years ending with 1842, was 40s. or $1 20 per bushel, throughout Europe. The purchases of England during that time had reached 19,148,268 bushels per annum. In the three last years the purchases of England have averaged but five milhon bushels per annum, and in 1845 they were less than three million bushels. Nearly all the demand for account of Great Britain which had raised the level of prices from an average of 70 cts.

per bushel in the five years ending with 1837, to an average of $1 20 in the five years ending with 1842, had ceased, yet the price continued and continues to advance. Russia has suspended her corn-laws, and Holland and Belgium have remitted theirs, and the average in Europe is now $1 43 per bushel! against an average of 60 cents in the United States, and $1 67 in England.

The improvement in the business of Europe, which has facilitated an increased consumption of food generally, and that of wheat particularly, appears to have resulted from two primary causes, viz: the construction of rail-roads, by which rapid and cheap communication has been effected in the mining and manufacturing districts, and in the extension of internal trade by customs unions, thereby removing artificial barriers to intercourse at the same time that the natural ones are overcome.

The states comprising the Zollverein or Customs Union and Belgium, in the official statistics, afford the most positive and marked indication of this improvement. The population of all the states now composing the Customs Union, in 1834, was 23,478,120. In 1845, the population of the same states was 25,534,321, being an increase of nearly one per cent. per annum. The revenue of the Customs Union rose from 14, 515,722 thalers in 1834, to 26,471,591 in 1845, having nearly doubled in ten years. This expresses of course the duties upon articles imported into the German states, and at the same level of duties would indicate a doubling of the trade in ten years. But inasmuch as that the duties have repeatedly been modified, the ratio of increase in the actual trade must be much greater. A new impulse was last year given to this trade by means of a treaty between Belgium and the German Union. The benefits which each nation has derived from their mutual concessions in favor of commerce, is already manifest in the trade of Belgium, according to official reports. When Belgium separated from Holland, in 1830-31, her manufacturing industry underwent a great reverse, inasmuch as that previous to that time, she had to supply Holland and her colonies with those productions of mining and manufactur