UNITY OF INTERESTS. 45 



nations, tliey stimulate and increase the capital and honor of 

 our own. 



In order to show the more intimate connection between 

 agriculture and its kindred interests, I would refer to a speech 

 of ]\Ir. Stewart of Pennsylvania in Congress on the "Woollens' 

 Bill of 1828. He said that he supported the bill from its sup- 

 posed benefits to agriculture, on the ground that protection to 

 our manufactures created a home-market for our formers 

 which no change in Europe could affect, and prevented the im- 

 portation of foreign agricultural products to the neglect of our 

 own. He continued : " What is the importation of cloth but 

 the importation of agricultural products? Analyze it, re- 

 solve it into its constituent parts or elements, and what is it? 

 Wool and labor. What produces the wool ? Grass and grain. 

 What supports labor but bread and meat? Cloth is composed 

 of the grass and grain that feed the sheep and the bread and 

 meat that support the laborer who converts the wool into 

 cloth." He also controverted the idea that the encourage- 

 ment of manufactures was injurious to commerce, and held it 

 to be a sound doctrine that the prosperity of commerce would 

 always be in proportion to the prosperity of agriculture and 

 manufactures. 



Daniel Webster once spoke of agriculture as follows : " It 

 feeds us, to a great extent it clothes us ; without it we should 

 not have manufactures, we should not have commerce. They 

 all stand together, like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the 

 centre, and that largest is agriculture." Washington said : 

 *' I know of no pursuit in which more real and important ser- 

 vice can be rendered to any country than by improving her 

 agriculture. A skilful agriculture will constitute one of the 

 mightiest bulwarks of which civil liberty can boast." 



Did he foresee the great struggle through which his country 

 was to pass, and through which it could not have passed tri- 

 umphantly but with the assistance of this " mighty bulwark " 

 that compelled the South to give up sooner than she would, 

 had not starvation stared her in the face ? It was the lack 

 of bacon and corn as well as the force of our bullets that gave 

 us the victory. It was the power we held to supply that 

 mighty aiTny with bread, combined with the bone and sinew 

 of our brave farmer boys that made the North invincible. 



