719 



appreciated only aa men are educated to do what they do with their 

 eyes open and their minds busy about their labor. The drudge who 

 plows just as his father plowed, and makes a meadow of his orchard 

 because his father always did so before him, and plants the same field 

 to potatoes every year because he never heard of his father putting it 

 to any other use, may be one of the sterling yeomanry that politicians 

 tell us about, and may pol' at election as straight a ticket as any body, 

 but he is far from giving any dignity to his calling, or of being one to 

 whom we can point as a proper representative of this most important 

 as well as most pleasing occupation of man. 



But, however it may have been in the past, the drudge can no longer 

 be the successful farmer. In the new exigencies that now spring up 

 around us, the agriculturist must be educated to his business — he must 

 be a man of observation — one who has his mind upon his labor, and 

 who will make the most of his experience, and study out for himself 

 how he shall meet the new difficulties to which his father was a stran- 

 ger. No ! send the dolt anywhere but on the farm — place him behind 

 the counter if you will, for he can measure tape with the best; or make 

 an attorney of him, and if he possess plenty of impudence, the public 

 may mistake his impudence for talent, or make a doctor of him, and 

 the less he knows the more he may succeed, for the world has a great 

 admiration for quackeiy — but don't turn him upon the farm, for every 

 furrow he plows but exposes his folly — the weeds grow up to reproach 

 his thoughtlessness, his cattle pine for want of the skill to care for their 

 wants, his very soil grows thin and poor under his management, and 

 finally refuses to yield out of sheer disgust. 



It is frequently said that legislatures keep constantly altering the 

 laws to benefit the lawyers by the litigation which such changes almost 

 necessarily create. Your Secretary or some of your other members 

 who have had experience as legislators, may be able to give us some 

 light on this subject — for my own part, though I cannot say that the 

 remark as made is strictly true, yet I think I may safely say that these 

 changes, and the study they force upon us to keep up with them, do a 

 great deal towards preventing a considerable portion of our profession 

 from sinking into inane and dumpish old fogyism. The weevil and 

 the potato rot act upon farmers a good deal as legislatures do upon 



