FORAGE CROPS IX NEW ENGLAND. 147 



bilities of profit from such enormous investments are almost 

 beyond the comprehension of ordinary minds. I do not for- 

 get, either, that men have gone West, and have grown up 

 with the growing country, and become wealthy without great 

 effort. Nor do I forget the cries of suffering, and the hard- 

 ships inseparable from pioneer life, and the falling by the 

 wayside of the thousands upon thousands whose lives have 

 been sacrificed in this " will-o'-the-wisp " pursuit after a soil 

 more easy to cultivate, and which will constantly give with- 

 out receiving. 



So, when I say that I believe in New-England agriculture, 

 I mean that — taking into consideration the natural charac- 

 ter of the soil, the high degree of intelligence that may now 

 be brought to bear upon it, the excellent markets which have 

 grown up at our very doors, the permanent improvements 

 which our fathers and grandfathers have left in every town 

 and county (grand monuments to their industry, economy, 

 enterprise, and patriotism), the beautiful scenery among our 

 wooded hills and river-valleys, the old associatioHs which bind 

 families and neighborhoods, and, last but not least, the bury- 

 ing-grounds where repose the ashes of conscientious fathers, 

 kind and enduring mothers, and loving friends and relatives 

 — New England still holds out inducements to 3'oung men 

 who can appreciate these things, fully equal to any thing 

 which the emigrant to a new country has a right to expect 

 during the generation in which he himself lives. I do not 

 propose to quarrel with history : for I am aware that the west- 

 w^ard march has been a march of necessity ; that under the 

 prevailing ideas, or perhaps the lack of ideas, the old hive 

 could not have contained all the increase of a thrift}^ people, 

 certainly not all the thousands upon thousands who have 

 joined us from foreign countries: but I can plainly see in this 

 emigration movement the same ideas prevailing which have 

 been a curse to American agriculture almost from the day 

 the Pilgrim Fathers first set foot on these shores. 



I refer, of course, to that system of agriculture which makes 

 land grow poorer under tillage, rather than better, and which, 

 sooner or later, must compel cultivators to seek new fields. 

 The agriculture of New England during the past two hun- 

 dred years, like the agriculture of the United States to-day, 

 hardly deserves the name of agriculture. 



