290 [Senate 



hensive and useful of all sciences, the science more or less of all 

 times, of all nations, and of all people — that of agriculture and its 

 second self, horticulture, including all that can interest the farmer. 



Excellence and national independence are perfectly within our own 

 means and our own opportunity. The farmer, seated beneath his 

 own vine and apple tree^ is the most envied of lords; he is the lord of 

 the soil, the unembarrassed chief of the family -mansion: 



" Far back in the ages. 

 The plow with wi-eaths was crowned; 

 The hand of kings and sages 

 Entwined the chaplet round." 



Some portion of this primitive regard for the cultivators of the 

 soil is now beginning to be revived, but still the general estimation 

 in which our agricultural population is held, is much too low. Their 

 influence, taking into view their numbers and their honorable voca- 

 tion, is not what it ought to be, in the respective towns and counties 

 of their residence, and in the debates of the senate chamber and hall 

 of legislation. In order that the evils growing out of this state of 

 things may be remedied, and the agricultural interest may be fully 

 and more honorably represented and encouraged, the farmers as a class 

 should give increased attention, not only to those branches of know- 

 ledge which relate to their own immediate pursuit, but to gerieral 

 knowledge. A great portion of them must be men of liberal, ex- 

 tended, and thorough education. They must not only as a body be 

 more awake to the importance of such education, but more free and 

 openhanded in their means and measures for its attainment and dif 

 fusion among themselves. 



It is quite time the idea should be exploded, that the mere rudi- 

 ments of education are all the farmer needs. The sentiment is 

 utterly unsound and pernicious. " Man is the minister and interpre- 

 ter of nature." So said Lord Bacon. The emplojment of the far- 

 mer brings under his very eye some of the greatest wonders of na- 

 ture. He is tu put forth his agency in aid of those natural processes 

 by which the germ of vegetable life is produced, and all that is won- 

 drous in plants brought to maturity and perfection. Scarcely a 

 branch of natural science but has an intimate relation to the business 

 of agriculture, and peculiar claims upon the attention of the farmer. 

 Nor can any good reason be assigned why he should not have the 

 benefit of full instruction in all the branches of useful learning. 

 Every college and extensive well endowed seminary should have its 

 professorship of agriculture, with grounds for practical experiment. 

 Farmers cannot appropriate a portion of the annual avails of their 

 labor for any object which will yield them richer harvests than edu- 

 cation. 



Were the entire farming population of the State to awake at once, 

 and fully, to this important subject, and make the efforts which are in 

 their power in relation to it, the benefits, it is believed, would be in- 

 calculable. An enhanced value would thus be given to their landed 

 estates, and new security would be given to them for the increase and 



