122 WISCONSIN AGRICULTURE. 



And thus it would be witli England, if, instead of by far the 

 larger portion of her rich and fruitful lands lying an uncultiva- 

 ted waste, in the possession of a nobility rapidly declining to 

 physical, moral and mental imbecility, they should be divided 

 among practical English farmers, and their management com- 

 mitted to hands that labor, and to heads that think. And if, 

 instead of only one in forty of her population holding an interest 

 in the soil, as now, one-fourth should be landlords, as in this 

 country, she would not present to the world, as she does to-day, 

 the double spectacle of dishonor and disgrace, in her crowded 

 work-houses and pauperism, on the one hand, and a pampered, 

 weak and vacillating aristocracy, on the other. 



This cursory, historical view of the subject, sufficiently de- 

 monstrates the dignity and importance of agriculture, not only 

 as a high department of industry in political economy, but also 

 as having a permanent and effective influence in forming and 

 organizing civil institutions. In the first settlement of this 

 country, it was the primary and almost the only pursuit and 

 means of subsistence — and in time, when an increased popula- 

 tion required society to assume a more organized form, it became 

 and has continued to be, the great leading industrial interest of 

 our Republic. Land, with us, could always be acquired at little 

 cost, and the disposition to possess it has always been much less 

 than the means. The richest and the fairest land on which falls 

 the cheering light of Heaven, fairer than Aicadia, and richer 

 than Italian plains ; whose broad expanse swells with bursting 

 vegetation and teems with fruits and fatness, offers to all, almost, 

 without money and without price happy homes of husbandry, 

 and a fee-simple title in the soil. Over such a land has been 

 constructed, by the wisdom of the greatest Statesmen and purest 

 patriots of history, a government which tolerates no titled classes, 

 or privileged few, perfectly adapted in all its parts to secure 

 equal rights, and a system of laws for the protection and en- 

 couragement of every department of domestic industry, and for 

 the first time in the history of the world, has been fully developed 

 the true dignity and nobility of labor, and a great farming aris- 

 tocracy. Those who have studied with any care the philosophi- 



