380 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



only when there is enterprise, and enterprise is the child of a 

 common necessity. And there is no reason in tlie natnre of 

 man wliy agricultural labor with us should be a struggle for a 

 subsistence merely, and therefore to be avoided as far as possi- 

 ble. It is an art ; it invokes and will employ a high order and 

 great variety of learning ; it develops the physical man ; it cul- 

 tivates and chastens all moral qualities, and it stimulates the 

 intellect. Agriculture in Massachusetts is not on the one hand 

 go hopeless as to leave men in despair, nor, on the other, has 

 nature been so generous as to invite us to rely upon her spon- 

 taneous products. Excellence is an attainment through strug- 

 gle and labor amidst the active competition of other men. We 

 judge men, men judge themselves, not so much by their actual 

 attainment, as by the process of the struggle and the obstacles 

 which have been overcome. If you see a farm in the highlands 

 of Worcester equal to the best cultivated one on the alluvial 

 banks of the Connecticut, the Worcester farmer at once takes 

 the highest place in your esteem. And this preference does not 

 rest upon the superiority of the attainment, but upon the evi- 

 dence which it furnishes that there has been a higher exhibition 

 of enlightened labor, energy, enterprise and genius in the one 

 case than in the other. And you will pardon me if I say, in 

 illustration of a view I intend to take, that the Connecticut River 

 farmers, though more favored in soil and climate, are not the 

 best farmers of Massachusetts. If, in your minds, agriculture 

 is a mere means of sustaining animal life, then no doubt you 

 should place yourself where it can be sustained with the smallest 

 amount of physical labor. But agriculture takes rank with the 

 highest forms of labor and learning where and only where there 

 is opportunity, inducement and necessity for the highest exer- 

 cise of the intellectual faculties. Now no man can pretend that 

 agriculture in the West is the intellectual exercise that it is 

 with us. It may indeed be true that there is as much mind 

 employed upon the land there as in New England ; but let no 

 one assume from existing facts that the equality will be main- 

 tained through generations and centuries. The West has no 

 character of its own. It is a vast lake, kept constantly in motion 

 by the number and force of its tributaries, whose currents are 

 distinctly marked over its whole surface. When immigration 

 into the AVest shall cease, that vast region will be what its own 



