SECRETARY'S RETORT. 131 



deserves. The emphatic and unanimous opinion, however, 

 expressed by the Board as to the necessity of some systematic 

 course of agricultural instruction being adopted in this Com- 

 monwealth, renders it unnecessary for the committee to enlarge 

 upon the importance of education to those who are to be 

 employed in cultivating the soil. Their duty appears to be 

 principally confined to the suggestion of some plan by which 

 this object can be best accomplished. A few preliminary 

 remarks, however, upon the advantages to be derived by 

 extending the benefits of education specially adapted to those 

 who are to become farmers, based upon the idea of its being a 

 proper object for the State to aid and direct, may not be out 

 of place. 



Agricultural improvement has ever been an object of much 

 attention to all governments, for the obvious reason that the 

 industry which supplies sustenance to the human race lies at 

 the foundation of the political integrity and strength, as well as 

 of the happiness and prosperity of a nation. From the purest 

 despotism to the completest democracy, the same solicitude has 

 always existed, for upon the cultivation of the land depends 

 the chief resources of all governments. It measures by its 

 excellence, and by the skill and intelligence displayed by the 

 husbandman, the civilization, the refinement and the virtue 

 of a people. 



In this country the science of agriculture has been neglected 

 for very obvious reasons. Possessing a wide extent of rich and 

 virgin soil, which demanded no skill to make it produce abun- 

 dantly, when one portion of the land became exhausted, new 

 fields were occupied, and the old ones were neglected, until 

 vast districts have been scourged of their natural fertility, and 

 reduced almost to the condition of barrenness, to that degree, 

 at least, which renders them unprofitable to cultivate, without 

 more skill and more capital. This skill we have not acquired, 

 because it has not been needed ; it is now required, and without 

 it labor is no longer rewarded in an equal degree in agricul- 

 ture, as in other industrial pursuits. Hence it is, that we see 

 efforts making in all directions to restore the soil to its former 

 condition by the aid of science. 



While this process of depreciation has been going on, we 

 have been advancing rapidly in all other branches of human 



