as been already said,
gives nothing, but is ready to lend everything; and when the debts are
punctually repaid, each successive loan is made on a larger scale; but
when the debtor fails in punctuality, his credit declines, and the loans
are gradually diminished, until at length he is turned out from house
and home. No truth in the whole range of science is more readily
susceptible of proof than that the community which limits itself to the
exportation of raw produce must end by the exportation of men, and those
men the slaves of nature, even when not actually bought and sold by
their fellow men.

... With the growth of commerce, the necessity for moving commodities
back, and forth steadily declines, with constant improvement in the
machinery of transportation, and diminution in the risk of losses of the
kind that are covered by insurance against dangers of the sea, or those
of fire. The treasures of the earth then become developed, and stone and
iron take the place of wood in all constructions, while the exchanges
between the miner of coal and of iron--of the man who quarries the
granite, and him who raises the food--rapidly increase in quantity, and
diminish the necessity for resorting to the distant market.

* * * * *

=_Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863._=

From "An Essay on Calcarcous Manures."

=_156._= IMPROVEMENT OF ACID SOILS.

Nearly all the woodland now remaining in lower Virginia, and also much
of the land which has long been arable, is rendered unproductive by
acidity; and successive generations have toiled on such land, almost
without remuneration, and without suspecting that their worst virgin
land was then richer than their manured lots appeared to be. The
cultivator of such soil, who knows not its peculiar disease, has no
other prospect than a gradual decrease of his always scanty crops. But
if the evil is once understood, and the means of its removal are within
his reach, he has reason to rejoice that his soil was so constituted as
to be preserved from the effects of the improvidence of his forefathers,
who would have worn out any land not almost indestructible. The presence
of acid, by restraining the productive powers of the soil, has, in a
great measure, saved it from exhaustion; and after a course of cropping,
which would have utterly ruined soils much better constituted, the
powers of our acid land remain not greatly impaired, though dormant,
and ready to be called int