52 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



ance with these sciences enables him to offer to tho plants he would 

 nourish, the kinds of food adapted to their growth. 



But education demands the time and attention of the farmer for 

 other reasons. Why does he complain that his interests do not 

 receive their share of legislative attention and ^Drotection? — that 

 mechanical and manuflicturing interests are protected by tariffs, 

 while those of agriculture are left to sustain themselves? — that the 

 farmer does not fill his proportion of the honorable and lucrative 

 stations created by government ? — and that in the social circle the 

 mechanic, or the merchant, or the professional man, or, indeed, all 

 these together, are found standing before him ? Does he conceive 

 that social polish, (which is only an inferior part of education,) is 

 preferred to common sense ? — or dress and equipage to moral 

 worth ? Does he think that a life of idleness and ease is honored 

 over one of industry and toil ; or the labors of the head esteemed 

 over those of the hands ] He may come blindly to these conclu- 

 sions. He may decide that society is thus deeply and fundamen- 

 tally wrong, and that his chance for ultimate restoration to his just 

 and proper position among his fellow men, is consequently remote 

 in proportion to the magnitude of these errors. It is not that 

 education is more or less respected. It is not that toil and industry 

 are more or less honorable. What is education ? It has been de- 

 fined — and the definition is in one sense most strikingly correct — as 

 the advantage of which man manages, in his course through the 

 world, to gain possession ! Advantage over whom or what ? Over 

 whom, it may well be asked, but his fellow man ! Who, then, but 

 the educated man, should occupy the high places in the earth, and 

 the front rank in society ? — or who naturally would secure these 

 places, taking the world as it is ? 



The farmer says his interests are neglected in legislation. No 

 doubt it is, to some extent, true, — otherwise, why have we ten or 

 twenty medical, theological and legal schools and colleges, to one 

 agricultural '/ Why should not the farmer expect this neglect ? No 

 farmer watches his neighbor's cattle with the same attention he gives 

 his own ; and why should the lawyer study to legislate for corn and 

 cattle, when he has more than he can do to hedge and ditch about 

 his own calling, by securing a competent mystification of "heretofore, 

 T/hereas, and aforesaid, " upon the statute book? Why should the 



