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2006. DEBT, Jefferson's personal.—[continued].

Had our land market remained
in a healthy state everything might
have been paid, and have left me competently
provided. But the agricultural branch of industry
with us had been so many years in a
state of abject prostration, that, combined
with the calamitous fluctuations in the value
of our circulating medium, those concerned
in it, instead of being in a condition to purchase,
were abandoning farms no longer
yielding profit, and moving off to the western


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country.—
To George Loyall. Ford ed., x, 380.
(M. 1826)