Vermont Telegraph

Beet Sugar.—The letter on this subject from the Hon. H. L. Ellsworth, of Washington city, which we insert on our last page, will arrest the attention of all who take an interest in the progress of agriculture or the arts. The fact that a discovery has just been made by which nearly double the usual quantity of sugar can be extracted from the beet, and by a process so simple and cheap, that refined sugar made from this vegetable can be put into market in France for seven cents a pound, is well fitted to produce important changes in those countries which depend for their wealth upon the cultivation of this great staple. It would not be surprising if in some of these countries, a revolution in their agriculture should be followed by a revolution in their social and political institutions. It is well known that the system of domestic slavery has for many years depended almost entirely for its support upon the immense profits derived from the culture of cotton and sugar; and sagacious observers have long since predicted that whenever free labor could be brought in competition on a large scale with slave labor, in the culture of these products, the system of slavery would receive a blow from which it could never recover. The culture of the beet on our immense Western prairies seems to furnish the desideratum in relation to sugar; and it is certainly more than possible that improvements in the cultivation and preparation of flax may ere long supply the North with a rival to the cotton plant of the South.—N. Y. Observer.