1857.] The Claims of Agriculture, etc. 487 



American Statesmanship must adopt a different system of political 

 economy, and instead of ignoring, as now, the very existence of 

 Agricultural science, and repudiating all its teachings and thereby 

 impoverishing our soil at the rate three hundred millions of dollars 

 a year, it must exercise a wiser foresight toward all that relates to the 

 planting and farming of the soil, it must gather in its employ the 

 best informed men to foster agricultural science ; it must enlist 

 State legislatures in its behalf, requiring yearly statistical accounts 

 of the number of acres under tillage, meadows in pasturage, and 

 the products of each, and endeavor to so direct public instruc- 

 tion as to have due reference to the varied employments of men in 

 after life ; so that each class may be placed in a position which 

 would enable it to develop a literature of its oicn, and acquire 

 a mental as well moral discipline, in connection with tis own oc- 

 cupations, intersts and pursuits ; in short, to adopt such a course In 

 relation to this greatest of all pursuits as has been fully recognized 

 and successfully acted upon, with regard to some four or five of 

 the varied pursuits of men. The divines the lawyers, and physicians, 

 the teachers, and the military men of our country, each and all have 

 their specific schools, libraries, apparatus, and Universities for the 

 application of all known forms of knowledge to their several pro- 

 fessions in life. Hence the surprising intelligence and power which 

 these classes now exhibit. Hence the eloquence and power of our 

 pulpits and our courts, and senates, the efiicieney of our medical and 

 military schools. We claim then as a nation of agriculturists the same 

 advantages, the same liberally endowed institutions, with libraries, 

 apparatus, teachers, and the application of the sciences taught as'ls 

 enjoyed by the so called professional classes. We must repudiate 

 and scout at all times, and in all places, the old monastic notions of 

 ages gone, and now but too prevalent, that no Colleges, no literature, 

 no science can be suited to the wants of farmers — to the industrial 

 classes of society. That God has so made the world, that peculiar 

 sohools, peculiar applications of science and a peculiar resultant lit- 

 erature are found indispensable to the highest success in the art of 

 killing men, in all States, while nothing of the kind can be based on 

 the infinitely multifarious arts and processes of feeding, clothing 

 and housing them. 



Such notions, however prevalent, should be regarded as a shallow, 

 pedantic assumption and be treated as wicked and blasphemous. 



" Why has God linked the light, the dew drop, the clouds, the 



