94 ME. JOHN JUST ON FAULTS IN FARMING. 



to him. Experience alone has taught him to expect certain 

 results to follow certain methods of treatment of the soil. 

 Yet experience, such as he possesses, cannot teach him 

 whether the treatment he follows is best calculated to produce 

 such results. He acts without data. He goes on doing so 

 and so, because his ancestors have done the same for many 

 generations before him, and his neighbours still around him 

 continue the practice. As regards any science in agricul- 

 ture, the common farmer is unfortunately nearly as ignorant 

 as the animals he employs to assist him in his labours. And 

 though he may rise early and toil late, the recompense re- 

 turned him is inadequate to the pains bestowed, and poverty 

 too often becomes the lot of him, who might, if better in- 

 structed, fill his house and the land in which he lives with 

 plenty. 



The main object of all the friends of agriculture ought to 

 be to amend this state of things, to improve the farmer's 

 Condition. Both by precept and example he ought to be 

 taught. Men of science are in duty bound to come forward, 

 and aid in instructing this hardy and thrifty race of their 

 fellows. Errors should be pointed out, faults exposed, and 

 directions given them respecting an economical and use- 

 ful expenditure of their labours, and the means of improve- 

 ment which they have at command. The opulent and the 

 skilful, those who, from having greater advantages, have 

 been better taught, and have carried out in their own prac- 

 tice better management, should encourage them by show- 

 ing, that the resources of the soil alone, in this country, 

 are incompetent to their maintenance and remuneration; 

 and that on themselves alone, and on the judicious means 

 they employ, and the proper courses they pursue, their pro- 

 sperity as a body must henceforward depend, as in all cir- 

 cumstances and gradations of society it ought. 



Many as are the errors of the common farmers around us,* 

 * The neighbourhood of Bury is alluded to. 



