A Contrast

The crop of tobacco grown in Virginia (deducting from the quantity inspected the portion made in North Carloina) is about 33,000 hogsheads, the value of which may be estimated .it 81,650,000. The ascertained value of straw and palm leaf hats and bonnets, made in Massachusetts, by female industry, is $1,640,000 - chiefly in three counties - Worchester, Hampshire, and Franklin. "The above statistics deserve the serious consideration of every individual in the planting States. Long experience in the latter demonstrates the fact, that the productions of one or two great staples for export, neglecting domestic manufactures and general farming, by a wise rotation of crops, is sure to exhaust the soil, impoverishing the people, and depopulate large and once fertile districts. Planting alone is the worst possible applicacation of human industry, because it expends labor, not in reclaiming the wilderness, in covering the land with fruitful fields, beautiful gardens, delightful residences, and thriving villages, but in rendering a rich virgin soil a sterile plain. Industry, which is so badly applied as to make the earth poorer than it was before, is much worse than idleness; for the system makes each generation leave a planting State worse than it found it, No community, however large or small, can long flourish on any given area of land, which does not substantially im prove the soil and augment its productiveness year after year, as Nature increases its inhabitants. To do this, a fair proportion of its population must be employed in manufactures. - The mechanics of Rochester, by making a rotation of crops profitable in the surrounding country, enable the farmers of Monroe county to raise a million and a half bushels of wheat annually, worth as much as the whole tobacco crop of Virginia, according to the estimate of the Times. A city and village population of 35,000, by creating a reliable home market for grain, provisions, wool, fruit, garden vegetables, hay, straw, &c, has so improved the land in the vicinity of Rochester as to raise its productive value from five to fifty dollars an acre."