counteracting the labours for destruction, still the latter work is in general progress. It may require (as it did in my native region) more than two hundred years, from the first settlement, to reach the lowest degradation. But that final result is not the less certainly to be produced by the continued action of the causes."
As to the extent to which the process is carried, Mr. Gregg
says:[1]
"I think it would be within bounds to assume that the planting capital
withdrawn within that period [the last twenty-five years] would, judiciously
applied, have drained every acre of swamp land in South Carolina, besides
resuscitating the old, worn-out land, and doubling the crops—thus more
than quadrupling the productive power of the agriculture of the State."
It would be consoling to hope that this planters' capital in
the new region to which it is driven were used to better
results. Does the average condition of the people of western
Louisiana and Texas, as I have exhibited it to the reader in a
former chapter, justify such a hope? When we consider the
form in which this capital exists, and the change in the mode
of its investment which is accomplished when it is transferred
from South Carolina, we perceive why it does not.
If we are told that the value of one hundred thousand dollars has been recently transferred from Massachusetts to a certain young township of Illinois, we reasonably infer that the people of this township will be considerably benefited thereby. We think what an excellent saw mill and grist mill, what an assortment of wares, what a good inn, what a good school, what fine breeding stock, what excellent seeds and fruit trees, what superior machinery and implements, they will be able to obtain there now; and we know that some of these or other sources of profit, convenience, and comfort to a neighbourhood, are almost certain to exist in all capital so transferred. In the capital transferred from South Caro-*
- ↑ Fifth Annual Report to Directors of Graniteville Company.
