60 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OP THE 



Pardon this digression. It was wrung from me by reading 

 upon their gilded palaces, their majestic temples, their tri- 

 umphal columns, and their eighty thousand seated amphithea- 

 ters, the thrilling record of blood and famine in their impover- 

 ished provinces. Why should it then be deemed incredible 

 that the Etrurian plow of Cincinnatus, composed of a wooden 

 crotch, and harnessed by thongs of rawhide to the horns of 

 the oxen, should have continued the Roman plow for many 

 ages? Why should their uncouth reaping-hook, with its still 

 more crooked left-hand accompaniments, have been super- 

 seded by a more improved utensil ? Why should agricultur- 

 ists have taken delight in extended fields of waving grain ; in 

 eleek, well-fed flocks and herds ; or in spacious barns and well- 

 filled granaries ? Such possessions would have proved the 

 certain signal for rapine and plunder ; for personal violence, 

 and perchance for murder. No! their only shield was appar- 

 ent destitution ; their only granaries were hidden excavations 

 in the earth, whilst the forest or the mountain-steeps furnished 

 a hiding place for their sheep and cattle. The imperial tax 

 upon all their known possessions, in itself onerous, was usually 

 doubled by the rapacity of their governors and their numerous 

 officials. 



With slight modification, agriculture has labored under 

 similar embarrassments the world over, until modern times. 

 Wherever the relation of lord and vassal exists, whether as 

 serfs of the crown, or by any of the forms of feudal tenure, 

 there you will never find either agricultural prosperity or 

 progress. True, small parcels of land may be farmed out by 

 the lord of the manor, to his retainers and dependents, and be, 

 by them, kept in productiveness by hand-trenching tillage. 

 But this is not what we, in America, call farming. When 

 we speak of a farmer, we mean both the owner and cultivator 

 of broad acres. Five hundred farms in portions of France 

 would hardly equal in extent the possessions and inclosures 

 of individual farms in our Northwestern States. 



