106 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



" Wealth arising from the solid improvements of agriculture 

 is most durable. No equal capital puts in motion a greater 

 quantity of productive labor than that of the farmer. Not 

 only his servants but his cattle become producers. Nature, 

 too, labors along with man. Her work remains as a gain 

 after deducting everything which can be regarded as the 

 work of man. But the capital which comes from commerce 

 is precarious in possession." Thus while the value in land is 

 real, and the wealth which comes from its improvement tangi- 

 ble and sure, the money which is yielded by trade, and rents, 

 and warehouses, and fiictories is uncertain; and often, as is 

 the case now with some kinds of rents and factories, a man 

 is better off without them than with them. Yet, marvelous 

 and strange as it may appear, our people, especially our 

 young people, infatuated with the unreal pictures of ease 

 which they imagine city life affords, and crazed with its false 

 allurements — are actuall}^ giving away their land, and aban- 

 doning farms and houses which are the only real sources of 

 wealth, independence and hapj3iuess. But we have known 

 instances, and so have you, doubtless, where many of these 

 persons who have left the farm for some seedy occupation in 

 a village or city, have been assisted by some fiirmer relative, 

 with a barrel of potatoes, or a firkin of butter, or a quarter 

 of beef, to replenish their empty larder — or, where the city- 

 starved famil}^ has found a secure shelter and plenty of food, 

 over many a shut-down of the mill, or a suspension of factory 

 work, at the old farm home of their fathers ! . 



It needs few statistics to prove that the agricultural popu- 

 lation of a country is its true element of power, its real 

 conservative force. It maintains its ground in quiet and 

 persistency ; and alike, in war and peace, carries on its life- 

 giving pursuits and adds to the wealth of the nation. It, 

 alone, is free from the evils which come to society from 

 an excess of non-productive population, extravagant expendi- 

 tures, an unstable currency, the over-supply of manufactured 

 goods, and even war itself. In France, during the reign of 

 radical Communism, its six millions of landed proprietors 



