No. 63.] 53 



It is not alone in the brilliant results of scientific investigation, nor 

 in the fertility of the soil, nor in ^le general salubrity of the climate j 

 that the American farmer finds the ground of his brightest anticipa- 

 tions for the future. There are other and higher elements in the com- 

 position of his fate. The government which watches over him is the 

 government of his choice — ^a government in which the permanent in- 

 terests of the great mass of the people are secured by placing the 

 power in their own hands. Under such institutions the pendulum of 

 public justice may sometimes vibrate between dangerous extremes, 

 but it must eventually repose where justice and the interests of the 

 many, require that it should rest. Such are the hopes of the farmers 

 of our country. It is not to be denied that their interests have been 

 sometimes neglected, and their rights sacrificed to the sinister aspira- 

 tions of classes more favorably situated for political combinations; but 

 if there is any foundation for our faith, that a free government is the 

 fountain of equal justice, these aberrations must be corrected in the 

 slow but certain progress of truth and right. 



I trust that American agriculture will illustrate and confirm the 

 striking remark of the author of the " Esprit des Lois," a writer, the 

 most philosophical and liberal of his time, " that it is not those coun- 

 tries which possess the greatest fertility, which are the best cultiva- 

 ted, but those which have secured the most liberty." I find this sug- 

 gestion, so flattering to our hopes, eloquently commented upon by a 

 late distinguished agriculturist of our country, in an address which 

 he delivered before the Agricultural Society of Pennsylvania; and I 

 gladly avail myself of this opportunity to pay to his memory a tri- 

 bute of respect, which is due, in a more eminent degree, to but one 

 other name in the history of American farmers and patriots. With 

 many other improvements in agriculture, Judge Peters was emphati- 

 cally the author of the plaster and clover culture. The time which 

 your patience will allow me to occupy on this occasion, will not per- 

 mit me to recount the many experiments, at once ingenious and phi- 

 losophical, with which he demonstrated the wonderful eflncacy of 

 plaster, nor the efforts, equally persevering and philanthropic, with 

 which he labored to introduce into general practice, this great fertili- 

 zer. He succeeded. None but those well acquainted with the course 

 of husbandry in our wheat growing districts, can estimate how much 

 of the eighty-four millions annually produced in our country, is ow- 

 ing to the introduction of plaster and clover. The benefits of this 



