1 Essays 37
For one artisan, or merchant, I suppose, we have at
least one hundred farmers, by far the greatest part
cultivators of their own fertile lands, from whence
many of them draw, not only the food necessary for
their subsistence, but the materials of their clothing,
so as to need very few foreign supplies; while they
have a surplus of productions to dispose of, whereby
wealth is gradually accumulated. Such has been the
goodness of Divine Providence to these regions, and
so favorable the climate, that, since the three or four
years of hardship in the first settlement of our
fathers here, a famine or scarcity has never been
heard of amongst us; on the contrary, though some
years may have been more and others less plentiful,
there has always been provision enough for ourselves,
and a quantity to spare for exportation. And although
 the crops of last year were generally good,
never was the farmer better paid for the part he can
spare commerce, as the published price-currents
abundantly testify. The lands he possesses are also
continually rising in value with the increase of population;
 and, on the whole, he is enabled to give such
good wages to those who work for him, that all who
are acquainted with the old world must agree, that
in no part of it are the laboring poor so generally
well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and well paid, as
in the United States of America.
If we enter the cities, we find that since the Revolution
 the owners of houses and lots of ground have
had their interest vastly augmented in value; rents
have risen to an astonishing height, and thence

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