No. 112.] 563 



tions, female seminarieSj free schools, and benevolent institutions. 

 It has furnished efficient aid to promote commerce, to facilitate the 

 navigation of rivers, and to render our harbors safe and secure. 

 It has dug canals, and built railroads. It has protected manufac- 

 tures of every description; Of this we do not complain. Itshould 

 exert a fostering influence upon the interests of the entire popula- 

 tion. It is not that the State has done too much for these; but 

 that it has done vastly too little, indeed almost nothing for the 

 paramount interests of agriculture. 



Agricultural Education — Should not the policy be changed 1 

 Is it not obviously a mistaken one ? Is it not time for the Empire 

 State to set the noble example before her sister States, of making 

 a liberal appropriation for an agricultural school and farming 

 establishment, in which the most perfect systems of husbandry 

 shall be exemplified, and the principles and practice of the art be 

 thoroughly taught ? , ^ 



It is not anticipated that all, or even a large number compari- 

 tively,of the young men of this State who may choose farming as 

 an occupation, would obtain access to this institution. Nor is this 

 necessary, in order to render it efficient and useful to the com- 

 munity at large. Knowledge is diffusive, and especially so in 

 this age of activity and inquiry. A very few well-informed per- 

 sons, instructed in such a school, would carry all the improve- 

 ments, inventions and discoveries there made, perfected, or 

 brought into notice, into every county in the State, and would 

 quietly, without expense, introduce them to the notice of the mil- 

 lions simply by their own practical application of them to farm- 

 ing purposes. A single well conducted farm cannot, lor a long 

 time, remain isolated. We are imitative creatures; and when 

 money is to be made by thepperation, Yankees are said to have an 

 astonishing propensity to imitate pertoctly and speedily. Where 

 there is one sucli farm, there will in a few years be twenty more 

 beside it in a similar condition. Let there once be a model, and 

 and it will not be slow to arouse an honorable and elfectual com- 

 petition. But this can be obtained in its higliest perfection only 

 by the estalilishment by tlie State, of an agricultural larm and 

 school, at wliich all the ])rinciples o( science and art applicable 



