SAGADAHOC COUNTY SOCIETY. 105 



studies have not fitted him to occupy, but remember that he was 

 over-ioersuaded and pressed into the service by your agents, and 

 comes with doubt and hesitation to lay his humble sheaf by the side 

 of the rich and beautiful gifts which nature and art have so profusely 

 spread around us. 



These luxuriant fruits of the garden, the orchard, the dairy and 

 the fields — these flocks, herds and steeds from your stalls and pas- 

 tures, eminent for beauty and usefulness, all attest your skill in 

 your happily chosen vocation. It is not then of the adaptation of 

 seed to soils, of gardening, orcharding, stock raising, the dairy, or 

 of the subject of fertilization, or any other branch of practical agri- 

 culture that I would speak in such a presence. Permit me there- 

 fore to depart from the beaten track, and turn from these rigidly 

 practical questions, to themes which, if less interwoven with the 

 farmer's daily life and daily toil, are none the less real, and none 

 the less worthy of our careful study and earnest consideration. I 

 ask your attention to a few brief suggestions, having reference to 

 the position and responsibilities of farmers as American citizens; 

 and the influence of agriculture, as a pursuit, on the formation of 

 character. 



Agriculture, as a distinct occupation in this country, commenced 

 with, and has been attended throughout its rapid growth in all the 

 free States of our Union, by a series of facts and circumstances 

 more favorable to the development of an intelligent, moral, inde- 

 pendent and robust population, than ever before attended and led 

 on the progress of a rural people on any part of the globe, or 

 at any prior period of human history. In nearly all the leading 

 nations of the earth the cultivators of the soil were once held, 

 either in the most abject form of human slavery, or in the milder 

 form of villauage, vassalage or serfdom. They were bought and 

 sold, and transferred with the soil like flocks and herds. 



Although in many countries of Europe this system of bondage 

 has become extinct, and will in time disappear in all, the soil is too 

 generally retained in the hands of landholders, and its tillers are 

 mere tenants at will, working the soil of their landlords for a portion 

 of its product. There they have but little influence in the government 

 that rules over them. From year to year, from century to century, 

 from age to age, they have toiled on, surmounting obstacles with 

 diificulty, and advancing but slowly and tediously up the bights 

 of human progress. They are yet toiling in the middle passage, 

 with those longed for summits far far above them, almost lost to 



