LABOR AND EDUCATION. 227 



elevated by figuring in public affiiirs or even by getting into office. ' 

 He needs previous elevation to save him from disgrace in his public 

 relations. The lowest men, because most faithless in principle, most 

 servile to opinion, are too often found in olRce. I am sorry to say 

 it, but the truth should be spoken, that at the present time political 

 action in this country does little to lift up any who are concerned in 

 it. It stands in oi)position to a high morality. Politics, indeed, 

 regarded as the study and pursuit of the true, enduring good of the 

 community, as the application of great, unchangeable principle to 

 public affairs, is a noble sphere of thought and action ; but in its 

 common acceptation, or considered as the invention of temporary 

 shifts, as the playing of a subtle game, as the tactics of party for 

 gaining power and the spoils of office, and for elevating one set of 

 men above another, is a paltry and debasing concern. All interests 

 of society should be represented in the government and protected 

 by it. I would b^' no means discourage the attention of farmers to 

 politics in its true sense. They ought to study in earnest the inter- 

 ests of the country, the principles of our institutions, the tendency- of 

 public measures. But the difficulty is we do not study ; and until 

 we do we cannot rise by political action. A great amount of time, 

 which, if well used, would form an enlightened population, is wasted 

 on newspapers and conversations which inflame the passions, which 

 unscrupulously distort the truth, which denounce moral independence 

 as treachery to one's party ; which agitate the country for no higher 

 end than a triumph over opponents and for the emoluments secured 

 by office. To rise we must substitute reflection for passion. Much, 

 however, is to be hoped from the growing selfrespect of farmers and 

 others, which tends to make them shrink indignantly from the 

 disgrace of being used as blinded partizans and unreflecting tools. 

 Much is to be hoped from the discovery which must sooner or later 

 be made, that the importance of party is greatly overrated ; that it 

 does not deserve all this stir. Political institutions are to be less 

 and less deified, and are to shrink into a narrower space ; and just 

 in proportion as a wiser estimate of government prevails, this frenzy 

 of political excitement will be discovered and put to shame. 



The dominant idea of the education of a farmer is that his labor 

 may become more skilled and more profitable ; but to know how to 

 make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before is not 

 all of the farmer's life. He has higher interests and higher respon- 

 sibilities than those for which some men would alone provide an 



