A short wheat crop in England, Mr. Webster says, affects the exchanges of the civilized world.  In the vast increase of population in the absence of long wars and famines, the importance of this staple is constantly increasing.  Its cultivation is the most attractive and pleasant of all descriptions of husbandry; and its rewards are generally remunerating, when the soil and climate are favorable, and the markets are not too distant.

It is important to know what our relation is to this staple of the world, and what is, and what is likely to be, our contribution to the great aggregate of production.  Beyond feeding our own great and rapidly increasing population, it probably will not soon, if ever, be very great.  It is a mistake, I apprehend, to suppose our country is naturally a great wheat-producing country.  The wheat district at present, in comparison to the whole extent of our territory, is limited.  It is confined, so far as any appreciable amount is grown, to about ten degrees of latitude and twenty degrees of longitude, and embracing about one half the number of the States.  The crop of 1848 is estimated by the Commissioner of Patents at one hundred and twenty-six millions, and our population at twenty-two millions.  This gives a less number of bushels, per head, to our population than the consumption of Great Britain, which is generally set down at one hundred and sixty millions, or six bushels to each inhabitant.  But with us Indian corn is a great substitute; so are potatoes and oats in Ireland and Scotland.  Still our consumption of wheat, including the black population, is undoubtedly less, per head, than theirs.  But in the absence of any certain data, to ascertain either the actual production, or our consumption, our only safe course is to take the actual excess, or the amount exported, after supplying our own wants.  This, for the fiscal year 1848, being the crop of 1847, amounted, in flour and wheat, to twelve millions two hundred and ninety-four thousand one hundred and seventy-five bushels, although Mr. Burke’s figures would show a surplus of some forty millions!  That there was not, and never has been any such surplus in the country is very evident, for the foreign demand was all the time good, and drew away all we had to part with.

The crop of 1848 was, undoubtedly, one of the best and largest we have ever grown; yet I have ascertained, by application at the registrar’s office, that the exports for the fiscal year 1842, amounted in wheat to but 1,527,534 bushels, and in flour to 2,108,013 barrels, or less by 226,676 bushels than the exports of 1848.  Twelve millions is comparatively a small surplus in a favorable season, for a country with a population of twenty-two millions of inhabitants.  The loss of a small per cent. in an unfavorable season would at once sink this excess.

    Let us now notice more in detail the different sections of our
    country as adapted to the growth of wheat.