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ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



suade others to live by it; some will practice law, who would be 

 the last to obey law, and some who have small ability to secure 

 our legal rights to us, if we apply to them for that purpose; some 

 will doctor us to death in cold blood, and some will kill us with 

 medicine, when most anxious to save us. It will be so in all the 

 employments. There will be farmers, who are not fit to be 

 farmers; mechanics who are not fit to be mechanics; and mer- 

 chants who are not fit to be merchants. Natural inaptitude, or 

 unfitness for a chosen employment will sometimes be the cause; 

 but ten times oftener the person himself will be in fault — will 

 not qualif)" himself for the employment he has deliberately chosen 

 and so will dishonor it, or at best, will do little or nothing to 

 cause it to be respected. 



3. Just in proportion as any calling is occupied by men unfit 

 for it, it will sink in the estimation of mankind. It will not 

 avail to say that the calling would be eminently honorable and 

 useful, if filled with the right men. Mankind estimate their 

 fellow men as they are, not as they should be; and as they judge 

 the men, so they honor or despise the calling. As wicked or 

 ignorant men in the learned professions, destroy the respect 

 naturally conceded to the ministers of religion, the expounders 

 of law and the practitioners of the healing art; and as unskilful 

 mechanics and trickish merchants destroy that due to their calling, 

 so ignorant, unskilful farmers fritter away that due to theirs. 

 Their employment is the heaven appointed employment for about 

 half of the human race. If God is kind, it cannot be an employ- 

 ment which necessarily degrades those engaged in it. It is not 

 such an employment. It may be degraded by lack of moral 

 worth, or want of intelligence in those who pursue it; but it can 

 degrade no one. It is eminently compatible with those high 

 moral, intellectual and social qualities, which ever have com- 

 manded, and ever will command the respect of mankind. 



4. If the farmers of any country do not maintain an elevated 

 position; if they do not wield a strong, social and political influ- 

 ence; if they fail to enjoy a fair proportion of the government 

 patronage, the fault is somewhere else than in their employment. 

 I am not hejL*e to inquire where the fault is; but that it does not 

 inhere to the employment itself, is sufficiently evident from the 

 fact that in all farming communities there are some who stand 



