192 WEST OXFORD SOCIETY. 



for a lifetime. The shrewd, intelligent farmer ■will always be the 

 man of the age, or perhaps a little in advance of bis age, to seize 

 upon, and make use of those laws by which be shall in the best 

 possible manner, reap an abundant harvest. 



Why, gentlemen, I do not believe that our Creator intended that 

 every occupation under the sun, even the very meanest, should 

 receive the aid of science, and the farmer be left to drag out a hard 

 life without its blessings. I do not believe that the telegraph was 

 made tOh benefit the merchant alone. Nor do I believe but that the 

 Bteam engine, which in England alone is now doino; the labor of one 

 hundred millions of people in other occupations, shall yet be dragged 

 into the immediate service of the ftirmer. The bolts and bars that 

 kept enclosed within heavy walls the truths of science for nearly six 

 thousand years have been snapped asunder one after another, and 

 you with all others are at liberty to step in and take advantage of 

 the treasures there so ready to be lavished upon you. I am not 

 ■willing to give up the cherished thought that the farmers of New 

 England are yet to be surrounded with more of what constitutes real 

 happiness than any class of men on the face of the globe. 



As I look over our own State, I unconsciously picture to myself 

 each farmer's home as some little Eden Avhere simplicity of manners, 

 intelligence and religion dwell. One of the finest pictures ever 

 drawn by the pen of inspiration, is that where our first parents 

 "heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the cool of the day." 

 Nothing hinders you from surrounding your homes and filling your 

 gardens with trees and shrubbery where you may, without the neces- 

 Bity of hiding yourselves, find a retreat from the noise and tumult 

 of public life, and secure to yourselves that quiet and happiness 

 "which such a garden can always give to the humblest citizen. 



Many a time have I been led to exclaim, as I have compared the 

 tumultuous and uncertain condition of other pursuits with that of 

 the skillful and stable farmer. You do not know how well situated 

 you are. There may be, and, no doubt are exceptions, but I have 

 yet to see the first man that has left a good farm and gone out West, 

 who has in subsequent years returned to the home of his youth in 

 any better circumstances than he would have been, had he remained 

 at home. To a young man without a fiimily the case may be diflfer- 

 ent, but to a man once settled down on a farm, a removal out West, 



