swamps, (and certainly between those stretching from the Ashley nearly to the Santee,) would generally penetrate into marl of the richest quality, lying a few feet below the surface of the swamps. If duly ap. preciated, this rich calcareous earth, to be used as manure, would go far to reimburse the cost of the excavation; and, if used for lime burning, would furnish good lime, and at one-third of the price of that for which South Carolina has paid and continues to pay millions of dollars to the lime burners of New England. This voluntary tribute, at least, which is one of so many unnecessarily paid by the South to the North, might be ended to the immediate and great profit of both the sellers and the buyers of the substituted lime, made of the abundant, cheap, and excellent native material. The buying of Northern lime by South Carolina and Georgia is as unprofitable and as absurd a procedure as the usage of importing Northern hay. But of these, and of many similar things, we of the South have no right to blame any but ourselves. All the commodities which we import from the Northern States, and which might be more cheaply provided at home, serve, indeed, to make up an enormous amount of annual tribute. But this part of our general burden is fairly and properly levied by Northern enterprise and industry upon Southern listlessness and indolence. Very different, however, is the case as to the far greater proportion of the general amount of tribute paid by Southern to Northern interests, from which we have no defence, because government induces and enforces the payment by the legislative_machinery of protecting duties and the indirect bounty system. But I am straying from my designed subject-the improvement of Southern agriculture to its governmental and political oppression. Putting aside all speculative and untried subjects and modes of improvement, and counting upon nothing more than the proper use of your calcareous manures and judicious tillage, and the early results of both, and supposing that your country should be so benefited only in the same degree as has been the small portion of mine, already marled or limed, the most moderate estimate of the agricultural values so to be created would now appear to you so greatly exaggerated as to be altogether incredible. But however much I would desire to avoid the position of a discredited wit. ness, I will not be restrained by that fear from stating general results, which are notorious in Virginia, and to sustain the truth of which thousands of particular facts could be adduced. These results, susceptible of clear proof, or exhibited by official documents, are, that thousands of farms have been doubled or tripled, and some quadrupled in production, and the general wealth of their proprietors as much increased. The assessed values of marled lands have been increased by many millions of dollars, while those of similar lands, not so treated, have continued to decline as all did before; and the treasury of the commonwealth is already benefited by many thousands of dollars received annually from the counties containing these improved lands, and derived from them; while the revenue from lands of the neighboring, and before similar counties, is still decreasing.

So far I have spoken as to benefits which have already occurred, and which are unquestionable, and which have been derived from resources and facilities for improvement not to be compared, in amount and value, with those of South Carolina. I have elsewhere estimated the possible future and full fruition of this system of improvement, in Lower Virginia only, at $500,000,000 of increased pecuniary value of capital thereby to

be created. The full employment of your much greater resources of this kind, and over as wide a surface, would not be worth less. Then your other great resources, which have been named, but not estimated, would be so much more in addition.

But agricultural production and pecuniary values are not the only or the greatest gains; and though others rest upon opinion only, and are incapable of being measured, their existence and their value are not the less acknowledged by all judicious observers in our country, most improved in agricultural production by calcareous manures. The improvement of health has been mentioned; the improvement of economical and social habits, morals, and refinement, and better education for the growing generation, have been sure consequences of greatly increased and enduring agricultural profits; and these moral results will hereafter be increased in full proportion to the physical and industrial producing causes. Population, though a late effect, is already sensibly advanced by these agricultural causes. The strength-physical, intellectual, and moral-as well as the wealth and revenue of the commonwealth of Virginia, will soon derive new and great increase from the growing improvement of that one and smallest of the great divisions of her territory, which was the poorest by natural constitution, still more the poorest by long exhausting tillage, its best population gone, or going away, and the remaining portion sinking into apathy and degradation, and having no hope left, except that which was almost universally entertained, of fleeing from the ruined country, and renewing the like work of destruction on the fertile lands of the Far West. Terms of reproach and contempt (once not undeserved) have been so long and so freely bestowed. on this tide-water region of Virginia, and had become so fixed by use, that it will be long before they will cease to be deemed applicable, or before many persons, who now know this region only by the memory of former report, will learn that it is not altogether land of galled and gullied slopes, or broomsedge-covered fields, over whose impoverished and dwindling population indolence and malarious disease contend for mastery.

From these matters, referred to for proof or illustration, I return to my main subject, more immediately connected with, and more likely to be interesting to, my auditors.

There is not one of the industrial classes of mankind more estimable for private worth and social virtue than the landholders and cultivators of the Southern States. With them, unbounded hospitality is so universal that it is not a distinguishing virtue; and, in truth, this virtue has been carried to such excess as to become of vicious tendency. Honorable, high-minded, kindly in feeling and action, both to neighbors and to strangers, ready to sacritice self-interest for the public weal-such are ordinary qualities and characteristics of Southern planters. Many of the most intelligent men of this generally intelligent class are ready enough to accept, and to apply to themselves and their fellow-planters the name of "land-killers." But, while thus admitting, or even assuming, this term of jocose reproach, they have not deemed as censurable or injurious their conduct on which this reproach was predicated. They have regarded. their "land-killing" policy and practice merely as affecting their own personal and individual interests; and, if judged by their continued action, they must believe that their interests are thereby best promoted.

Their error in regard to their own interests, great as it may be, is incomparably less than the mistake as to other and general interests not being thus affected. As I have already admitted, individuals may acquire wealth by this system of impoverishing culture, though the amount of accumulation is still much abated by the attendant waste of fertility. But with the impoverishment of its soil, a country, a people, must necessarily and equally be impoverished. Individual planters may desert the fields they have exhausted in South Carolina, and find new and fertile lands to exhaust in Alabama. And when the like work of waste and desolation is completed in Alabama, the spoilers (whether with or without retaining a portion of the spoils) may still proceed to Texas or to California. But South Carolina and Alabama must, nevertheless, suffer and pay the full penalty of all the impoverishment so produced. The people who remain to constitute these States respectively as communities, are not spared one tittle of the enormous evils produced-not only those of their own destructive labors, but of all the like and previous labors of their fellow-citizens and predecessors who had fled from the ruin which they had helped to produce. And these evils to the community and to posterity, greater than could be effected by the most powerful and malignant foreign enemies of any country, are the regular and deliberate work of benevolent and intelligent men, of worthy citizens, and true lovers of their country!

I will not pursue this uninviting theme to its end-that lowest depression which surely awaits every country and people subjected to the effects of the "land-killing" policy. The actual extent of progress toward that end throughout the Southern States ought to be sufficiently appalling to produce a thorough change of procedure and reformation of the agricultural system of the South.

In addition to all increase of the other benefits of agricultural improvement which have been cited—pecuniary, social, intellectual, and moral— there would be an equal increase of political power, both at home and abroad, which, at this and the near approaching time, would be especially important to the well-being and the defence of the Southern States, and the preservation of their yet remaining rights and always vital interests. If Virginia, South Carolina, and the other older slaveholding States had never been reduced in productiveness, but, on the contrary, had been improved according to their capacity, they would have retained nearly all the population that they have lost by emigration; and that retained population, with its increase, would have given them more than a doubled number of representatives in the Congress of the United States. This greater strength would have afforded abundant legislative safeguards against the plunderings and oppressions of tariffs, to protect Northern interests-compromises, so called, to swell Northern power; pension and boundary laws, for the same purposes; and all such acts to the injury of the South, effected by the great legislative strength of the now more powerful, and, to us, the hostile and predatory States of the Confederacy. Even after Virginia, with more than Esau-like fatuity, had sacrificed her magnificent Northwestern Territory, which now con stitutes five great and fertile States, and a surplus, to make, by legislative fraud, a large part of a sixth State, and all of which are now among the most hostile to the rights of the people of the South-if Virginia had merely retained and improved the fertility of her present reduced sur

face, her people would not have removed. Their descendants would now be south of the Ohio, ready and able to maintain the rights of the Southern States, instead of a large proportion, as now, serving to swell the numbers and give efficient power to our most malignant enemies. The loss of both political and military strength to Virginia and South Carolina is not less than all other losses, the certain consequences of the impoverishment of their soil.

If it were possible that, for all Lower South Carolina, the system of improvement could be directed by one mind and will, as much as the operations of any one great individual estate, the most magnificent results could be obtained with great and certain profit, and in a few years. Without any additional labor or capital more than now possessed for beginning the improvements, and with only the subsequent increase of means, which would be supplied by the clear profits of the improvements as they became productive, most of the lands accessible to marl or lime could be covered by these manures in ten years. In twenty years from this day, all such lands could be thus improved, and by that time might yield doubled or tripled general products, and would exhibit a proportionally greater increase of value as capital. The new clear profits of this one great improvement would be enough in amount to effect all the practicable drainage of inland and river swamps in twenty years more; or, in that additional time, the increased revenue of the State treasury, from these new sources only, would suffice to construct all the great works of drainage, which would be beyond the means of individual proprietors.

In all opinions expressed as to the values and effects of the agricul. tural improvements proposed for South Carolina, my data are the experienced and unquestionable results of like labors in Virginia. The legitimate deduction, and the only one for untried operations, is, that like causes will produce like effects in both these different localities. I can. not conceive any reason, founded on existing differences of climate, soil, or subjects of culture, that can make calcareous manures less efficient or less profitable with you than with us. Nevertheless, I have learned, from mere rumor, that, in the small extension of their use, by new operators, which occurred here, there was no general and important benefit obtained. And such, I must infer, was the conclusion reached by nearly all the makers and observers of these trials, from the irresistible though negative evidence (which only is before me) that nothing considerable of such improvements, or of public notoriety, has been effected in latter years. In the absence of all particular information of the actual trials, their results, and the accompanying circumstances, of course I cannot pretend or be expected to explain the causes of disappointment which must

*A condition made by the government of Virginia, in the act of cession to the United States of all her Northwestern Territory, was, that this territory should afterwards be divided into not more than five new States. Five have already been carved out of this great domain: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and a space of 22,336 square miles remains, in the new Territory of Minnesota, which will hereafter constitute so much of another State, in violation of the act of cession by Virginia, and of the faith of the present Federal Government; and in which space, with all the Northwestern Territory, slavery was interdicted by the ordinance of 1787 of the Confederation. This space of 22,336 square miles, which ought to have been included in the five anti-slavery States already formed, but which will go to constitute a sixth, is nearly as large as South Carolina, and larger, by nearly 1,000 square miles, than the united surfaces of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

be the general result, as it seems that marling has languished, if not ceased in general, after a few faint efforts. But I infer that the main and usual cause of supposed failure or of inconsiderable benefit, has been the same prevailing bad practice, before denounced, of incessant or at least much too frequent tillage, which does not permit the fields to receive and retain organic matter from their own growths especially. This cause had operated on nearly all the trials of marl made previous to my service in South Carolina. Of all such cases of alleged failure that I was enabled to see and investigate the circumstances, the causes were such as I now suppose of the still later failures. These cases of failure and of disappointment, and the known causes, were brought fully to view in my report of the agricultural survey; and from the more extended remarks, I will quote a short passage, to show my then opinion of the facts and the causes of previous failures, and my earnest warning against the general course pursued. After reciting the general facts of failure of the previous trials of marling, I proceeded in these words: "Can any opponents of marling desire more full admissions than these? And yet they all serve to illustrate what I have continually striven to impress, that, without vegetable matter to combine with, calcareous manures will be of little value. But, on the other hand, I have heard of no trial of marl on land in proper condition—that is, recently and sufficiently rested, and thereby provided with vegetable matter-in which the effect has not been very great on the first crop. And three or four of such results, only, would be enough to explain the cause, (of failure in all other cases,) and to prevent all inferences unfavorable to marling, if from a hundred failures of early efforts under reverse circumstances.

Then followed particular statements of two different experiments, carefully made that year, (and the circumstances noted at my request,) of marling on new land, and therefore not exhausted of its vegetable matter, and in which the products (which were of cotton) were nearly doubled in the first year of the application.

Here, then, even in the few lines quoted from the much more full precepts to the same purport, there is full evidence of my having stated, in advance of all later trials, the sure cause of failure; and, in the warning against that cause, I may claim to have predicted all later failures of like occurrence. And if there had been thousands of failures, preceded and accompanied by very frequent and exhausting tillage, all of them would but the more strongly confirm my long entertained and often-expressed opinions and instructions as to the action of calcareous manures; and all such cases would not detract a little from the alleged available values. When urging the use of lime, I have never omitted to state that it gave no fertility of itself or by direct action, and that vegetable matter, in sufficient quantity and in conjunction, was essential to the beneficial operation of calcareous manures. The required organic matter may be supplied mainly in the growth of the land to be improved. But it must be supplied in some form, and in sufficient quantity; and, also, should be, in part, present in advance of the use of calcareous manures, to secure their best early effects.

*There is, however, one important case known to me, of at least partial exceptions to the general rule of failure of marling in South Carolina, in the very extensive and also profitable labors and improvements of Governor Hammond, on his estate bordering on the Savannah.