question. The eastern part of the State is hilly, and fit for farming; for which slave labour does not answer. The western part is used for cotton-planting; and the planters will not yet hear of free labour. The magnificent State of Kentucky has no other drawback to its prosperity than slavery; and its inhabitants are so far convinced of this that they will, no doubt, soon free themselves from it. They cannot look across the river, and witness the prosperity of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, without being aware that, with their own unequalled natural advantages, they could not be so backward as they are, from any other cause.
Kentucky is equally adapted for agriculture and commerce. She may have ports on the rivers, along her whole northern and western boundary; and she has already roads superior to almost any in the United States. She is rich in stone, and many other minerals; in mineral waters, and in a soil of unsurpassed fertility. The State is more thickly settled than is evident to the passing traveller; and the effect will appear when more markets, or roads to existing markets, are opened. In one small county which I visited, my host and his brother had farms of fifteen hundred acres each; and there were two hundred and fifty other farms in the county. Sometimes these farms are divided among the children. More commonly, all the sons but one go elsewhere to settle. In this case, the homestead is usually left to the youngest son, who is supposed likely to be the most attached to the surviving parent.
The estates of the two brothers, mentioned above, comprising three thousand acres, were bought of the Indians for a rifle. We passed a morning in surveying the one which is a grazing farm. There is a good red-brick house for the family: and the slave-quarter is large. Nothing can be more beautiful than the aspect of the estate, from the richness of its vegetation, and the droves of fine cattle that were to be seen everywhere. I never saw finer cattle. The owner had just refused sixty dollars apiece for fourteen of them. Fifteen acres of the forest are left for shade; and there, and under single oaks in the cleared pasture, were herds of horses and mules, and three donkeys; the only ones I saw in the United States.
We passed an unshaded meadow, where the grass had caught fire every day at eleven o'clock, the preceding summer. This demonstrates the necessity of shade.
We passed "a spontaneous rye-field." I asked what "spontaneous" meant here; and found that a fine crop of rye had been cut the year before; and that the nearly equally fine one now before us had grown up from the dropped seed.
We enjoyed the thought of the abundance of milk here, after the dearth we had suffered in the South. Forty cows are milked for the use of the family and the negroes, and are under the care of seven women. The proprietor declared to me that he believed his slaves would drive him mad. Planters, who grow but one product, suffer much less from the incapacity and perverse will of their negroes: the care of stock is quite another matter; and for any responsible service, slaves are totally unfit.
Instead of living being cheaper on country estates, from the necessaries of life being raised on them, it appears to be much more expensive. This is partly owing to the prevailing pride of having negroes to show. One family, of four persons, of my acquaintance, in South Carolina, whose style of living might be called homely, cannot manage to live for less than three thousand dollars a year. They have a carriage and eleven negroes. It is cheaper in Kentucky. In the towns, a family may live in good style for two thousand five hundred dollars a year; and for no great deal more in the country. A family entered upon a good house, near a town, with one hundred and twenty acres of land, a few years ago, at a rent of three hundred dollars. They bought house and land, and brought their slaves, and now live, exclusive of rent and hire of servants, for two thousand dollars a year, in greater numbers and much higher style than the South Carolina family.
The prospects of agriculture in the States north-west of the Ohio are brilliant. The stranger who looks upon the fertile prairies of Illinois and Indiana, and the rich alluvions of Ohio, feels the iniquity of the English corn laws as strongly as in the alleys of Sheffield and Manchester. The inhuman perverseness of taxing food is there evident in all its enormity. The world ought never to hear of a want of food,--no one of the inhabitants of its civilised portions ought ever to be without the means of obtaining his fill, while the mighty western valley smiles in its fertility. If the aristocracy of England, for whom those laws were made, and by whom they are sustained, could be transported to travel, in open wagons, the boundless prairies, and the shores of the great rivers which would bring down the produce, they would groan to see from what their petty, selfish interests had shut out the thousands of half-starved labourers at home. If they could not be convinced of the very plain truth, of how their own fortunes would be benefited by allowing the supply and demand of food to take their natural course, they would, for the moment, wish their rent-rolls at the bottom of the sea, rather than that they should stand between the crowd of labourers and the supply of food which God has offered them. The landlords of England do not go and see the great western valley; but, happily, some of the labourers of England do. Far off as that valley is, those labourers will make themselves heard from thence, by those who have driven them there; and will teach the brethren whom they have left behind where the blame of their hunger lies. Every British settler who ploughs a furrow in the prairie, helps to plough up the foundations of the British Corn Laws.
There is a prospect, not very uncertain or remote, of these prairie lands bringing relief to a yet more suffering class than either English labourers or landlords; the sugar-growing slaves of the south. Rumours of the progress of sugar-making from beet in France have, for some time past, been interesting many persons in the United States; especially capitalists inclined to speculate, and the vigilant friends of the slave. Information has been obtained, and some trials made. Individuals have sown ten acres and upwards each, and manufactured sugar with a small apparatus. The result has been encouraging; and a large manufactory was to be opened in Philadelphia on the 1st of November last. Two large joint-stock companies have been founded, one in New Jersey and the other in Illinois. Their proceedings have been quickened by the frosts of several successive seasons, which have so cut off the canes in the south, as that it cannot supply one quarter of the domestic consumption: whereas it had previously supplied half. Some of the southern newspapers have recommended the substitution of beet for canes.
However soon this may be done, the northern sugar planters, with their free labour, will surely overpower the south in the competition. This is on the supposition that beet will answer as well as canes; a supposition which will have Bern granted whenever the south begins to grow beet in preference to canes.
A heavy blow would be inflicted on slavery by the success of the beet companies. The condition of the cane-growing slaves cannot be made worse than it is. I believe that even in the West Indies it has never been so dreadful as at present in some parts of Louisiana. A planter stated to a sugar-refiner in New York, that it was found the best economy to _work off_ the stock of negroes once in seven years.
The interest excited by this subject of beet-growing is very strong throughout the United States. Some result must ensue which will be an instigation to further action. The most important would be the inducing in the south either the use of free labour in sugar-growing, or the surrender of an object so fatal to decent humanity.
The prettiest amateur farm I saw was that of the late Dr. Hosack, at Hyde Park, on the Hudson. Dr. Hosack had spared no pains to improve his stock, and his methods of farming, as well as the beauty of his pleasure-grounds. His merits in the former departments the agricultural societies in England are much better qualified to appreciate than I; and they seem to have valued his exertions; to judge by the medals and other honourable testimonials from them which he showed to me. As for his pleasure-grounds, little was left for the hand of art to do. The natural terrace above the river, green, sweeping, and undulating, is surpassingly beautiful. Dr. Hosack's good taste led him to leave it alone, and to spend his pains on the gardens and conservatory behind. Of all the beautiful country-seats on the Hudson, none can, I think, equal Hyde Park; though many bear a more imposing appearance from the river.
Though I twice traversed the western part of the State of New York, I did not see the celebrated farm of Mr. Wadsworth; the finest, by all accounts, in the United States. The next best thing to seeing it was hearing Mr. Wadsworth talk about it,--especially of its hospitable capabilities. This only increased my regret at being unable to visit it.
The most remarkable order of land-owners that I saw in the United States was that of the Shakers and the Rappites; both holding all their property in common, and both enforcing celibacy. The interest which would be felt by the whole of society in watching the results of a community of property is utterly destroyed by the presence of the other distinction; or rather of the ignorance and superstition of which it is the sign.
The moral and economical principles of these societies ought to be most carefully distinguished by the observer. This being done, I believe it will be found that whatever they have peculiarly good among them is owing to the soundness of their economical principles; whatever they have that excites compassion, is owing to the badness of their moral arrangements.
I visited two Shaker communities in Massachusetts. The first was at Hancock, consisting of three hundred persons, in the neighbourhood of another at Lebanon, consisting of seven hundred persons. There are fifteen Shaker establishments or "families" in the United States, and their total number is between five and six thousand. There is no question of their entire success, as far as wealth is concerned. A very moderate amount of labour has secured to them in perfection all the comforts of life that they know how to enjoy, and as much wealth besides as would command the intellectual luxuries of which they do not dream.
The earth does not show more flourishing fields, gardens, and orchards, than theirs. The houses are spacious, and in all respects unexceptionable. The finish of every external thing testifies to their wealth, both of material and leisure. The floor of their place of worship, (the scene of their peculiar exercises,) the roofs of their houses, their stair-carpets, the feet of their chairs, the springs of their gates, and their spitting-boxes,--for even these neat people have spitting-boxes--show a nicety which is rare in America. Their table fare is of the very best quality. We had depended on a luncheon among them, and were rather alarmed at the refusal we met, when we pleaded our long ride and the many hours that we should have to wait for refreshment, if they would not furnish us with some. They urged, reasonably enough, that a steady rule was necessary, subject as the community was to visits from the company at Lebanon Springs. They did not want to make money by furnishing refreshments, and did not desire the trouble. For once, however, they kindly gave way; and we were provided with delicious bread, molasses, butter, cheese and wine; all homemade, of course. If happiness lay in bread and butter, and such things, these people have attained the _summum bonum_. Their store shows what they can produce for sale. A great variety of simples, of which they sell large quantities to London; linen-drapery, knitted wares, sieves, baskets, boxes, and confectionary; palm and feather fans, pin-cushions, and other such trifles; all these may be had in some variety, and of the best quality.
If such external provision, with a great amount of accumulated wealth besides, is the result of co-operation and community of property among an ignorant, conceited, inert society like this, what might not the same principles of association achieve among a more intelligent set of people, stimulated by education, and exhilarated by the enjoyment of all the blessings which Providence has placed within the reach of man?
The wealth of the Shakers is not to be attributed to their celibacy.
They are receiving a perpetual accession to their numbers from among the "world's people," and these accessions are usually of the most unprofitable kind. Widows with large families of young children, are perpetually joining the community, with the view of obtaining a plentiful subsistence with very moderate labour. The increase of their numbers does not lead to the purchase of more land. They supply their enlarged wants by the high cultivation of the land they have long possessed; and the superfluity of capital is so great that it is difficult to conceive what will be done with it by a people so nearly dead to intellectual enjoyments. If there had been no celibacy among them, they would probably have been far more wealthy than they are; the expenses of living in community being so much less, and the produce of co-operative labour being so much greater than in a state of division into families. The truth of these last positions can be denied by none who have witnessed the working of a co-operative system. The problem is to find the principle by which all shall be induced to labour their share. Any such principle being found, the wealth of the community follows of course.
Whether any principle to this effect can be brought to bear upon any large class of society in the old world, is at present the most important dispute, perhaps, that is agitating society. It will never now rest till it has been made matter of experiment. If a very low principle has served the purpose, for a time at least, in the new world, there seems much ground for expectation that a far higher one may be found to work as well in the more complicated case of English society. There is, at least, every encouragement to try. While there are large classes of people here whose condition can hardly be made worse; while the present system (if such it may be called) imposes care on the rich, excessive anxiety on the middle classes, and desperation on the poor: while the powerful are thus, as it were, fated to oppress; the strivers after power to circumvent and counteract; and the powerless to injure, it seems only reasonable that some section, at least, of this warring population should make trial of the peaceful principles which are working successfully elsewhere. The co-operative methods of the Shakers and Rappites might be tried without any adoption of their spiritual pride and cruel superstition. These are so far from telling against the system, that they prompt the observer to remark how much has been done in spite of such obstacles.
There must be something sound in the principles on which these people differ from the rest of the world, or they would not work at all; but the little that is vital is dreadfully encumbered with that which is dead. Like all religious persuasions from which one differs, that of the Shakers appears more reasonable in conversation, and in their daily actions, than on paper and at a distance. In actual life, the absurd and peculiar recedes before the true and universal; but, I own, I have never witnessed more visible absurdity than in the way of life of the Shakers.
The sound part of their principle is the same as that which has sustained all devotees; and with it is joined a spirit of fellowship which makes them more in the right than the anchorites and friars of old. This is all. Their spiritual pride, their insane vanity, their intellectual torpor, their mental grossness, are melancholy to witness.
Reading is discouraged among them. Their thoughts are full of the one subject of celibacy: with what effect, may be easily imagined. Their religious exercises are disgustingly full of it. It cannot be otherwise: for they have no other interesting subject of thought beyond their daily routine of business; no objects in life, no wants, no hopes, no novelty of experience whatever. Their life is all dull work and no play.
The women, in their frightful costume, close opaque caps, and drab gowns of the last degree of tightness and scantiness, are nothing short of disgusting. They are averse to the open air and exercise; they are pallid and spiritless. They look far more forlorn and unnatural than the men. Their soulless stare at us, before their worship began, was almost as afflicting as that of the lowest order of slaves; and, when they danced, they were like so many galvanised corpses. I had been rather afraid of not being able to keep my countenance during this part of their worship; but there was no temptation to laugh. It was too shocking for ridicule. Three men stood up, shouting a monotonous tune, and dangling their crossed hands, with a pawing motion, to keep time, while the rest danced, except some old women and young children, who sat out.
The men stamped, and the women jerked, with their arms hanging by their sides; they described perpetually the figure of a square; the men and boys on one side, the women and girls on the other. There were prayers besides, and singing, and a sermon. This last was of a better quality than usual, I understood. It was (of all improbable subjects) on religious liberty, and contained nothing outrageously uncommon, except the proposition that the American revolution had drawn the last of the teeth of the red dragon.
It is not to be supposed that the children who are carried in by their widowed, or indolent, or poor, or superstitious parents, are always acquiescent in their destination. I saw many a bright face within the prim cap-border, which bore a prophecy of a return to the world; and two of the boys stamped so vigorously in the dance, that it was impossible to imagine their feelings to be very devotional. The story of one often serves as an index to the hearts of many. I knew of a girl who was carried into a Shaker community by her widowed mother, and subjected early to its discipline. It was hateful to her. One Sunday, when she was, I believe, about sixteen, she feigned illness, to avoid going to worship. When she believed every one else gone, she jumped out of a low window, and upon the back of a pony which happened to be in the field.
She rode round and round the enclosure, without saddle or bridle, and then re-entered the house. She had been observed, and was duly reprimanded. She left the community in utter weariness and disgust. A friend of mine, in a neighbouring village, took the girl into her service. She never settled well in service, being too proud for the occupation; and she actually went back to the same community, and is there still, for no better reason than the saving of her pride. Her old teachers had, it thus appeared, obtained an influence over her, notwithstanding the tyranny of their discipline; and it had not been of a wholesome moral nature. But no more words are necessary to show how pride, and all other selfishness, must flourish in a community which religiously banishes all the tenderest charities of life.
The followers of Mr. Rapp are settled at Economy, on the Ohio, eighteen miles below Pittsburgh. Their number was five hundred when I was there; and they owned three thousand acres of land. Much of their attention seems to be given to manufactures. They rear silkworms, and were the earliest silk-weavers in the United States. At my first visit they were weaving only a flimsy kind of silk handkerchief; last summer I brought away a piece of substantial, handsome black satin. They have sheep-walks, and a large woollen manufactory. Their factory was burnt down in 1834; the fire occasioning a loss of sixty thousand dollars; a mere trifle to this wealthy community. Their vineyards, corn-fields, orchards, and gardens gladden the eye. There is an abundance so much beyond their need that it is surprising that they work; except for want of something else to do. The Dutch love of flowers was visible in the plants that were to be seen in the windows, and the rich carnations and other sweets that bloomed in the garden and green-house. The whole place has a superior air to that of either of the Shaker "families" that I saw. The women were better dressed; more lively, less pallid; but, I fear, not much wiser. Mr. Rapp exercises an unbounded influence over his people. They are prevented learning any language but German, and are not allowed to converse with strangers. The superintendent keeps a close watch over them in this respect. Probationers must serve a year before they can be admitted: and the managers own that they dread the entrance of young people, who might be "unsettled;" that is, not sufficiently subservient.
I was curious to learn how five hundred persons could be kept in the necessary subjection by one. Mr. Rapp's means are such that his task is not very difficult. He keeps his people ignorant; and he makes them vain. He preaches to them their own superiority over the rest of the world so incessantly that they fully believe it; and are persuaded that their salvation is in his hands. At first I felt, with regard both to them and the Shakers, a strong respect for the self-conquest which could enable them to endure the singularity,--the one community, of its non-intercourse with strangers; the other, of its dancing exhibitions; but I soon found that my respect was misplaced. One and all, they glory in the singularity. They feel no awkwardness in it, from first to last.
This vanity is the handle by which they are worked.
Mr. Rapp is now very old. His son is dead. It remains to be seen what will become of his community, with its immense accumulation of wealth, when it has lost its dictator. It does not appear that they can go on in their present state without a dictator. They smile superciliously upon Mr. Owen's plan, as admitting "a wrong principle,"--marriage. The best hope for them is that they will change their minds on this point, admitting the educational improvements which will arise out of the change, and remaining in community with regard to property. This is the process now in action among the seceders from their body, settled on the opposite bank of the river, a short distance below Economy.
These seceders were beguiled by Count Leon, a stranger, who told the people a great deal that was true about Mr. Rapp, and a great deal that was false about himself. It is a great pity that Count Leon was a swindler; for he certainly opened the eyes of the Economy people to many truths, and might have done all that was wanted, if he had himself been honest. He drew away seventy of the people, and instigated them to demand of Mr. Rapp their share of the accumulated property. It was refused: and a suit was instituted against Mr. Rapp, in whose name the whole is invested. The lawyers compromised the affair, and Mr. Rapp disbursed 120,000 dollars. Count Leon obtained, and absconded with almost the whole, and died in Texas; the burial-place of many more such men. With the remnant of their funds, the seventy seceders purchased land, and settled themselves opposite to Beaver, on the Ohio. They live in community, but abjuring celibacy; and have been joined by some thorough-bred Americans. It will be seen how they prosper.
Though the members of these remarkable communities are far from being the only agriculturists in whom the functions of proprietor and labourer are joined, the junction is in them so peculiar as to make them a separate class, holding a place between the landowners of whom I have before spoken, and the labourers of whom I shall have to treat.
SECTION I.
DISPOSAL OF LAND.
The political economists of England have long wondered why the Americans have not done what older nations would be glad to do, if the opportunity had not gone by;--reserved government lands, which, as it is the tendency of rent to rise, might obviate any future increase of taxation.
There are more good reasons than one why this cannot be done in America.
The expenses of the general government are so small that the present difficulty is to reduce the taxation so as to leave no more than a safe surplus revenue in the treasury; and there is no prospect of any increase of taxation; as the taxpayers are likely to grow much faster than the expenses of the government.
The people of the United States choose to be proprietors of land, not tenants. No one can yet foresee the time when the relation of landlord and tenant (except in regard to house property) will be extensively established in America. More than a billion of acres remain to be disposed of first.
The weightiest reason of all is that, in the United States, the people of to-day are the government of to-day; the people of fifty years hence will be the government of fifty years hence; and it would not suit the people of to-day to sequestrate their property for the benefit of their successors, any better than it would suit the people of fifty years hence to be legislated for by those of to-day. A democratic government must always be left free to be operated upon by the will of the majority of the time being. All that the government of the day can do is to ascertain what now appears to be the best principle by which to regulate the disposal of land, and then to let the demand and supply take their natural course.
The methods according to which the disposal of land is carried on are as good as the methods of government almost invariably are in America. The deficiency is in the knowledge of the relation which land bears to other capital and to labour.[14] A few clear-headed men have foreseen the evil of so great a dispersion of the people as has taken place, and have consistently advocated a higher price being set upon land than that at which it is at present sold. Such men are now convinced that evils which seem to bear no more relation to the price of land than the fall of an apple to the motions of the planets, are attributable to the reduction in the price of government lots: that much political blundering, and religious animosity; much of the illegal violence, and much of the popular apathy on the slave question, which have disgraced the country, are owing to the public lands being sold at a minimum price of a dollar and a-quarter per acre. Many excellent leaders of the democratic party think the people at large less fit to govern themselves wisely than they were five-and-twenty years ago. This seems to me improbable; but I believe there is no doubt that the dispersion has hitherto been too great; and that the intellectual and moral, and, of course, the political condition of the people has thereby suffered.
The price of the public lands was formerly two dollars per acre, with credit. It was found to be a bad plan for the constituents of a government to be its debtors; and there was a reduction of the price to a dollar and a quarter, without credit. In forty years, above forty millions of acres have been sold. The government cannot arbitrarily raise the price. If any check is given to the process of dispersion, it must arise from the people perceiving the true state of their own case, and acting accordingly.
Some circumstances seem at present to favour the process of enlightenment; others are adverse to it. Those which are favourable are, the high prosperity of manufactures and commerce, the essential requisite of which is the concentration of labourers: the increasing immigration of labourers from Europe, and the happy experience which they force upon the back settler of the advantage of an increased proportion of labour to land; and the approaching crisis of the slavery question; when every one will see the necessity of measures which will keep the slaves where they are. Of the extraordinary, and I must think, often wilful error of taking for granted that all the slaves must be removed, in order to the abolition of slavery, I shall have to speak elsewhere.
The circumstances unfavourable to an understanding of the true state of the case about the disposal of land are, the deep-rooted persuasion that land itself is the most valuable wealth, in all places, and under all circumstances: and the complication of interests connected with the late acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and the present usurpation of Texas.
Louisiana was obtained from the French, not on account of the fertile new land which it comprehended, but because it was essential to the very existence of the United States that the mouth of the Mississippi should not be in the possession of another people. The Americans obtained the mouth of the Mississippi; and with it, unfortunately, large tracts of the richest virgin soil, on which slavery started into new life, and on which "the perspiration of the eastern States" (as I have heard the settlers of the west called) rested, and grew barbarous while they grew rich. A fact has lately transpired in the northern States which was already well known in the south,--that the purchase of Florida was effected for the sake of the slave-holders. It is now known that the President was overwhelmed with letters from slave-owners, complaining that Florida was the refuge of their runaways; and demanding that this retreat should be put within their power. Florida was purchased. Many and great evils have already arisen out of its acquisition. To cover these, and blind the people to the particular and iniquitous interests engaged in the affair, the sordid faction benefited raises a perpetual boast in the ears of the people about their gain of new territory, and the glory and profit of having added so many square miles to their already vast possessions.
In the eyes of those of the people who do not yet see the whole case, the only evil which has arisen out of the possession of Florida, is the Seminole warfare. They breathe an intense hatred against the Seminole Indians; and many fine young men have gone down into Florida, and lost their lives in battle, without being aware that they were fighting for oppressors against the oppressed. Probably few of the United States troops who fell in the late Seminole war knew how the strife arose.
According to the laws of the slave States, the children of the slaves follow the fortunes of the _mother_. It will be seen, at a glance, what consequences follow from this; how it operates as a premium upon licentiousness among white men; how it prevents any but mock marriages among slaves; and also what effect it must have upon any Indians with whom slave women have taken refuge. The late Seminole war arose out of this law. The escaped slaves had intermarried with the Indians. The masters claimed the children. The Seminole fathers would not deliver them up. Force was used to tear the children from their parents' arms, and the Indians began their desperate, but very natural work of extermination. They have carried on the war with eminent success, St.
Augustine, the capital, being now the only place in Florida where the whites can set their foot. Of course, the poor Indians will ultimately succumb, however long they may maintain the struggle: but, before that, the American people may possibly have learned enough of the facts of the case to silence those who boast of the acquisition of Florida, as an increase of the national glory.
It would be a happy thing for them if they should know all soon enough to direct their national reprobation upon the Texan adventurers, and wash their hands of the iniquity of that business. This would soon be done, if they could look upon the whole affair from a distance, and see how the fair fame of their country is compromised by the avarice and craft of a faction. The probity of their people, their magnanimity in money matters, have always been conspicuous, from the time of the cession of their lands by the States to the General Government, till now: and, now they seem in danger of forfeiting their high character through the art of the few, and the ignorance of the many. The few are obtaining their end by flattering the passion of the many for new territory, as well as by engaging their best feelings on behalf of those who are supposed to be fighting for their rights against oppressors.
There is yet hope. The knowledge of the real state of the case is spreading; and, if only time can be gained, the Americans will yet be saved from the eternal disgrace of adding Texas to their honourable Union.
The brief account which I shall give of what is prematurely called the acquisition of Texas, is grounded partly on historical facts, open to the knowledge of all; and partly on what I had the opportunity of learning at New Orleans, from some leaders and agents in the Texan cause, who did what they could to enlist my judgment and sympathies on behalf of their party. I went in entire ignorance of the whole matter.
My first knowledge of it was derived from the persons above-mentioned, whose objects were to obtain the good-will of such English as they could win over; to have their affairs well spoken of in London; and to get the tide of respectable English emigration turned in their direction. With me they did not succeed: with some others they did. Several English are already buried in Texas; and there are others whose repentance that they ever were beguiled into aiding such a cause will be far worse than death. The more I heard of the case from the lips of its advocates, the worse I thought of it: and my reprobation of the whole scheme has grown with every fact which has come out since.
Texas, late a province of Mexico, and then one of its confederated States, lies adjacent to Louisiana. The old Spanish government seem to have had some foresight as to what might happen, to judge by the jealousy with which they guarded this part of their country from intrusion by the Americans. The Spanish Captain-general of the internal provinces, Don Nemisio Salcedo, used to say that he would, if he could, stop the birds from flying over the boundary between Texas and the United States. Prior to 1820, however, a few adventurers, chiefly Indian traders, had dropped over the boundary line and remained unmolested in the eastern corner of Texas. In 1820, Moses Austin, of Missouri, was privileged by the Spanish authorities to introduce three hundred orderly, industrious families, professing the Catholic religion, as settlers into Texas. Moses Austin died; and his son Stephen prosecuted