5086. MARKETS, Land.—
The long succession
of years of stunted crops, of reduced
prices, the general prostration of the farming
business, under levies for the support of manufacturers,
&c., with the calamitous fluctuations
of value in our proper medium, have
kept agriculture in a state of abject depression,
which has peopled the Western States
by silently breaking up those on the Atlantic,
and glutted the land market, while it drew
off its bidders. In such a state of things,
property has lost its character of being a
resource for debts. Highland in Bedford,
which, in the days of our plethory, sold
readily for from fifty to one hundred dollars
the acre (and such sales were many then),
would not now sell for more than from ten
to twenty dollars, or one-quarter or one-fifth
of its former price.—
To James Madison. Washington ed. vii, 434.
Ford ed., x, 377.
(M.
Feb. 1826)
