672 



of feudal tenure, there jou will never find either agricultural prosperity 

 or progress. True, small parcels of land may be farmed out by the 

 lord of the manor, to bis retainers and dependents, and be by them 

 kept in tilth and productiveness by hand- trenching tillage. But this is 

 not what we in America call farming. When we speak of a farmer, 

 we mean both the owner and cultivator of broad acres. Five hundred 

 farms in France and portions of Germany would hardly equal in extent 

 the enclosures of a single Michigan farmer. 



In the cursory view thus taken, 1 have endeavored to mark, in the 

 three departments of industry, the cause of the wide difference in at- 

 tainment and essential progress. 



Agriculture is emphatically a peaceful occupation. It demands social 

 order, and efficient, permanent laws for its protection from aggressive in- 

 roads. It requires science to direct, intelligence to guide, and a fee 

 simple in the soil, to insure its successful management. And then, in 

 the wide range of human effort, there is no field of enterprise more 

 useful, more honorable, or more promising in its results, than American 

 farming. The first settlers of the Union were mainly agriculturists, and 

 land tillage has all along been nominally regarded as taking a high 

 rank in the pursuits of our citizens. 



And yet until within the last few years, what improvements were in- 

 troduced into the system? What discoveries of science had been gen- 

 erally adopted ? What useful inventions to facilitate cultivation, and to 

 lessen the burden of labor for man and beast had been regarded with 

 favor by our husbandmen ? What associations for an interchange of 

 views and a comparison of products, were in active operation ? What 

 newspaper, sheet, or periodical, laden with the gleanings of experience, 

 and scattering agricultural intelligence, was either circulated or read ? 

 What careful examination into the properties of different soils, and their 

 relative adaptation to the various kinds of grasses and cereal?, had ever 

 been prosecuted to satisfactory results ? And what intelligent system of 

 rotating crops, and of recuperating the exhausted energies of the soil 

 by rest and fertilizing ingredients, was received as the basis of opera- 

 tions by any considerable number of our farmers? The truth is, that 

 agriculture, for nearly a century, was conducted negligently, unskillfuUy, 

 without system, and without the requisite amount of intelligence, in 

 every part of our country. The unavoidable result waa everywhere ex- 



