STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. G7 



The interests of the human race repose on agriculture, and agriculture 

 reposes on this law. To fulfil it requires immense knowledge, and a rev- 

 erent and persistent thrift. The farmer that understands it and acts 

 upon it, stands at the head of all workers on the planet. 



We know very well that decay in the productiveness of the soil through 

 false methods of tillage, wrought the ruin of some of the immense em- 

 pires of antiquity; and the best students of agriculture as a science are 

 warning the world that there is scarcely a nation in Christendom now 

 that can show a proper balance sheet at the end of each generation, 

 drawn from the great ledger of its land. Some students say, that as a 

 system, the general tillage of Europe is a process of slow but sure exhaus- 

 tion. Either care is not taken to enrich the land, or, through lack of 

 science, the proper elements are not returned in the enriching material. 



How is it in America ? God has given us a fresh and fertile continent. 

 We boast of its opulence. That, however, is a gift to us. Can we boast 

 of our relation to its opulence? One of our counts in the great indict- 

 ment against slavery is, that it sucks the juices out of the soil, that it 

 blasts the landscape, that it finds a garden and leaves behind it a nettle 

 bed. We point to the farms of Eastern Virginia, of North Carolina, of 

 Western Tennessee, whose bounty has shrivelled, for our proof and illus- 

 tration. And it is true. Barbarism in the tillage leaves barbarism on 

 the face of nature. Slavery, except on river bottoms, quickly ' : skins 

 the land." But can we boast much of what American agriculture in the 

 free States has accomplished as yet? The statistics of Chicago and 

 Buffalo are astonishing; the export bills of lading of the last two years 

 ai*e peculiarly refreshing when we place them in connection with our 

 war. But what is the relation of our garnering to our capital ? What 

 are McCormick's-reapers, and the patent threshers, and the tireless mus- 

 cles of the steam plough leaving behind them, year after year, in the 

 immense area they sweep? The average fertility of New York State in 

 wheat has fallen fifty per cent since the first wheat crop was gathered. 

 Ohio has been steadily falling behind in the amount she can produce to 

 the acre; and tens of thousands move off from Indiana and Illinois, still 

 further west, in order to enjoy the bounties which they had seen decrease 

 around them, of a strong and unwrought soil. 



By a rate slower than that of the upper tier of slave States, and yet 

 by a rate that may be measured, the great grain districts of our country 

 are drawing from the treasury of nature without repayment. When a 

 mining company pays dividends out of its capital, and not out of its 

 earnings, the press rings w T ith denunciations of the swindle. And right- 

 eously. And we must soon come to consider the peril, if we will not now 

 stop to consider the honest} T , of discounting our capital into our immense 

 harvests. If you give an Indian in Australia a cottage furnished, he 

 will call some Indians of his tribe to the cottage grounds, sleep outside 

 the roof, bring out the furniture, piece by piece, and burn it for evening 

 fires, then burn the house down, and wander off in the hope that another 

 cottage may soon be given to him. Agriculture that wastes capital is 

 an improvement on this method of enjoying property only according to 

 the difference of rate in the destruction of its trust. Instead of using 

 nature, it uses it up. 



The waste of the most careful civilized nations in relation to their 

 agriculture is astonishing. England stands at the head of European 

 Slates in her care and success in the tillage of her soil. But think of 

 the sewerage of London ! Where does it go? Into the Thames. The 

 sickness which a few years ago was generated from that river, and the 



