7028. PROPERTY, Depreciation.—[continued].
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 paper 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 to one-fifth
of its former price.—
To James Madison. Washington ed. vii, 434.
Ford ed., x, 377.
(M.
Feb. 1826)
See Banks, Money and Paper Money.
