Spirit of the Times Batavia, Genesee County, New York State February 16-1827 Buffalo Convention. Agreeable to notices given in every town in the district of country called the Holland Purchase, comprising the counties of Erie, Niagara, Orleans, Chautauque, Cataraugus, and Allegany; delegates, (to the number of one hundred and forty,) from every town excepting four, attended at the Court House, Buffalo, on Wednesday last; when General Peter B. PORTER, was chosen President, and S. CUMINGS, Esq. of Batavia, and John DEXTER, Esq., of Mayville, appointed Secretaries. A Committee of three from each County was appointed to report resolutions, and the Convention adjourned till 9 o'clock on Thursday morning. They re-assembled on Thursday and adopted the following Address and Resolutions:-- The committee have given to the subject referred to them on yesterday the most deliberate and anxious examination. The present assemblage of citizens of the first intelligence from every part of the Holland Purchase, has enabled them to obtain the most satisfactory information in regard to the state of the country. These gentlemen concur in representing the inhabitants of their respective towns, as deeply and almost universally indebted to the Holland company; as greatly impoverished by the constant calls of that debt, and the heavy contributions which they are obliged to make for roads and other public improvements; and depressed and discouraged by the general gloom which the extraordinary policy of that company has spread over the whole face of the country. Such is the uniformity of the condition among the inhabitants of every part of the purchase, that a description of the affairs of a single settler will present a fair picture, with some slight shades of difference, of the pecuniary situation of two thirds, of our population. This settler comes into the country some twelve or fifteen years ago, and entered into a contract with the agent of the Holland company for the purchase of 200 acres of wild and heavily timbered land, at the price of four dollars an acre, payable in six or eight yearly instalments, subject to an annual interest of seven per cent, on the whole. He was, at that time, in the prime and vigor of life, and brought with him, as the sum of his earthly possessions, and the basis of his future fortunes, a wife and perhaps one or two young children; with a few hundred dollars worth of property consisting of some necessary articles of household furniture, a poor supply of farming utensels, and a dozen head of oxen cows and sheep. By fifteen years of unremitted labor, aided by the most rigid economy, he has been able to reclaim and bring into a state of cultivation, forty or fifty acres, of his land--to feed and clothe his family--to erect indifferent buildings for their protection--to meet series of taxes and contributions which, if imposed on an independent farmer in the more improved parts of the country, would be deemed appropriate, and to pay one half or three quarters of the accruing interest on his land debt. He now finds that his family has increased upon him in number & expense; that his physical powers are materialy impaired if not entirely wasted by labor and privation; that his buildings are in state of dilapidation; that his debt to the Holland company, which was originally $800, has by the accumulation of interest beyond what he has been able to meet, increased to 1000, or 1200 dollars; and that in the mean time, the general condition of the country as regards the comforts and advantages of civilization and improvement has been but little ameliorated. His only means, in prospect, for the discharge of his land debt, are dependent on the sale of the few products of his farm that will bear transportation to the market; and, generally speaking, the distance to this market is so great, and the state of the roads so wretched that he often fails to realize from sales of beef, pork, wheat, corn, oats, flax and wool, which are the staple commodities of the country, more than the actual cost of their production. The heavy articles of wood and timber in which his land abounds, and the minor commodities which are important items of thrift and wealth to farmers who live in the neighborhood of towns, such as butter, cheese, milk, veal, pigs, poultry, garden and field vegetables, &c. are sources of no profit to him, because he is not within reach of buyers and consumers. And this settler is now seriously balancing in his own mind, whether he shall, with his family, abandon the fruits of fifteen years of labor, and seek a more auspicious country; or remain where he is, a prey to the caprice of the Holland company. The radical error in the system of this company is exhibited in their uncreasing effort to seize and abstract from the country the whole of its available capital. The capital of a farmer consists in his horses, oxen, cows, and sheep, carts, waggons, ploughs, and labor-saving machines, without the use of which it is impossible for him to reclaim and render his land productive, and successfully compete with farmers in other parts of the country who are in a situation to avail themselves of these advantages.--But the moment a settler is discovered to be in possession of property of this description, the mistaken seal of the a_ents to make the utmost possible collections for the company often drives him to the necessity of disposing of them and thus dispossess him of the means of a profitable cultivation on his farm--or of the farm itself. The art however of settling a new country and rearing it to a sate of prosperity and independence, is not confined to the mere science of husbandry, or the business of clearing and cultivating the soil, but embraces, also, the policy of providing a market for the advantageous disposal of its products. The obvious measures which this policy dictates are, the construction of good roads, and other facilities of travel and transportation; establishment of towns; and introduction of labor-saving machines, for the encouragement of commerce and manufactures, which are the hand maids of agriculture, and without the aid and co-operation of which it cannot flourish. The Holland Company have not only neglected to devote any part of their capital to objects of this kind, but have effectually prevented its introduction from abroad, by referring those encouragements to men of enterprise and wealth, which they have been sure to meet with in every other part of the country: and the consequence is, that the Holland Purchase, provided by nature with all the requisites to make it the garden of the state, actually exhibits, at this time, less evidences of enterprise and improvement, than are to be found on the most sterile tracts within our boundaries. The embarassments which the intrinsic defects in the policy of the company, have brought on the inhabitants, have been greatly augmented by the operations of the new system of settlement lately adopted by the United States,--who are now selling lands of equal quality and situation, at the distance of one day's sail to the west, for less than half the prices charged by the Holland Company. For the last four years, hordes of emigrants, amply provided with money and means for the improvement of a new country, have been passing through our territory, while scarcely an individual who possessed the means of continuing his journey, has deigned to stop on the Holland Purchase: and yet this disheartening spectacle appears to have been viewed with the most stoic indifference by the Company, who have adopted no correspondent measures to countervail the effects of this new policy of the United States. The committee are unanimously and thoroughly convinced that the country does not, at this time, possess the means of paying one half of its land debts: and that a perseverance in the present policy of the Company will be calculated to diminish, rather than increase the future ability of the settlers to meet their engagements. And, delicate as the subject confessedly is, we ought not perhaps on this occasion to suppress the expression of our fears, that the measures recently resorted to, of expelling by legal process, whole families from land, and possessions on which they have spent years of labor and perhaps made considerable payment, because they cannot perform impossibilities, will, if persisted in, produce a state of feeling and excitement dangerous to the tranquility, as well as subversive of the prosperity of the country. Such fears were entertained, and openly and forcibly expressed on the floor of Congress, in relation to a class of settlers similarly situated, and had no small influence in producing the recent change in the land system of the United States. ... to be cont'd. ... submitted by Linda Schmidt *********************************************