Southern and Western Agricultural and Mechanic Associations [pp. 419-450]

THE
COMMERCIAL REVIEW.
Volume IV. DECEMBER, 1847. No. 4
Art. I.-SOUTHERN AD WESTERN AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANIC
ASSOCIATIONS.
SOUTH CAROLINA AND LOUISIANA AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES: PRO CEEDINGS, REPORTS, ETC.-PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE AND
AGRICULTURAL KNOWLEDGE AT THE SOUTH —PAPERS UPON SU GAR MANUFACTURE-ORATIONS OF HON. P. ROST AND J. D. E.
DE BOW.
THE approaching anniversary (the fifth) of the Louisiana Agricultural and Mechanics' Association, being about to be celebrated at
Baton Rouge, it is a meet occasion to call attention to its merits, anad
present its claims to the people of Louisiana and the South-west.
It is a common complaint, founded, alas, upon too melancholy a
truth, that the Southern States have been content to prosecute agri(culture with little regard tb system, economy, or the dictates of liberal science. Blessed with an unusual fertility of soil, it has been
erroneously deemed an ill advised economy to preserve and perpetuate that fertility. Almost any planting has been tolerated and prosecuted which could yield profitable returns for the time, without
any regard to future operations. What matter if sterility come at last
upon these pregnant fields?-if Virginia desert her tobacco acres?if the Carolinas, and even Alabama, once an El Dorado, turn up ani
exhausted soil? Is there not an empire beyond, in the South and
the West, where primitive wilds may be subdued and virgin soils
brought under the plow, to undergo the same routine again? We
will emigrate and leave waste, if we cannot sell, those old homesteads and acres from which, as a mint, our fathers, or even their
sons, in days not long removed, coined gold.
Alas, how frequent have been these changes and how melancholy!
What must be the reaction upon those who are compelled to undergo
themn? Can they feel the joys of HOME when all is so uncertain?
Why beautify those grounds, why develop gardens and orchards,
and arrange shading oaks? Will not a rude axe to-morrow be applied to them all when their proprietor has abandoned them for some
new conquest? Without the joys and comforts. without the associations of HO-IE, the virtues do not thrive. f,, ta.iat catn be a patriot,