236. AGRICULTURE, Prostration of.—
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 Belford,
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.
vii, 434.
Ford ed., x, 377.
(M.
Feb. 1826)
