"Mr. Carroll flowed Mr. Gregg. He was an accomplished orator, and praised in eloquent terms, Mr. Gregg's enterprise in building a factory. He eulogized his plans for fruit culture. He admitted, with humility, all the delinquencies Mr. Gregg charged against him excepting only one: 'He says I never made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. Having faith in Mr. Gregg's plans and advice about orchards, I planted one, and if anybody is disposed to believe I never made grass grow, I simply invite them to go look at that orchard. It is literally run away with grass.' The crowd laughed, voted for Mr. Carroll and the cause of slavery went forward while Mr. Gregg staid at home and the cause of civilization languished."[102] But Gregg preached his doctrine undaunted; his works are to be taken less as an indication of anything like general ante-bellum awakening to suicidal policies than as the bright exception that proves the melancholy rule. He showed that even cotton, the great god, drove enterprise from South Carolina, for, with the returns from its culture under ordinary management amounting to 3 or 4 and in some instances only 2 per cent., the inclination for planters to remove with their slave capital to the richer south-west was strong, thus keeping the population of the State at a standstill.[103] Mr. Ingle has stated the case broadly: "The economic history of the South from the Revolution to the Civil War is a record of the development of one natural advantage to the neglect of several others. Fitted by nature to support a large population engaged in a variety of pursuits based upon agriculture, it had a small population occupied in the production of raw material that contributed to the maintenance of a dense population in regions where artifice contended against harsh climate and a stubborn soil."[104] An "address to the Farmers of Virginia" read at a convention for the formation of the Virginia State Agricultural Society in 1852, adopted, reconsidered and readopted with amendments, and finally reconsidered again and rejected on the ground that it contained admissions, however true, which would be useful to abolitionists, contained the words: "... thus we, who once swayed the councils of the Union, find our power gone, and our influence on the wane, at a time when both are of vital importance to our prosperity, if not to our safety. As other states accumulate the means of material greatness, and glide past us on the road to wealth and empire, we slight the warnings of dull statistics, and drive lazily along the field of ancient customs, or stop the _plow_ to speed the _politician_--should we not, in too many cases, say with more propriety, the _demagogue_!... With a widespread domain, with a kindly soil, with a climate whose sun radiates fertility, and whose very dews distill abundance, we find our inheritance so wasted that the eye aches to behold the prospect."[105]