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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



which we have laid aside as not being practically necessary to 

 the operation of our laws (laughter) ; but apart from these 

 matters of form — which may be as well laid aside according to 

 our republican notions — there was nothing to make me forget, 

 even in a court of justic?, that I was not at home. Toe 

 English common law is the foundation of our jurisprudence, 

 and we cite now the latest decisions of your courts, not as 

 binding authorities, but as the best expositions of those princi- 

 ples which lie at the very foundation of our administration of 

 justice. I am myself connected with the administration of the 

 law — you know a Yankee generally has three or four different 

 matters in hand— but I say that, even in your courts of justice, 

 if certain ornaments were laid aside, I should hardly know 

 that I was not at home. As to your form of government I 

 have nothing to 8a3\ It is probably the best government for 

 Englishmen, although I should be very sorry to say that we 

 have not a much better one for our own country. Probably 

 there is no desire on the part of any of you to give us any 

 other; but, after all, there is a great deal of good sense in the 

 lines of the old poet, although I never could see much poetry 

 in them : 



" For forms of government, let fools contest ; 

 That which is best administered is best." 



There are, however, weighty differences between the habits of 

 the people of the old country and of the new. The expression 

 is a solution of the matter, for one is an old country and the 

 other is a new one. In Old England you have the grand old 

 estates, the grand old parks, the grand old trees, and the 

 grand old landscapes, which nothing but time can make, We 

 have, instead, the primeval forest— trees towering up by 

 hundreds and thousands of acres— a very different thing from 

 the landscapes of England. There is nothing, however, next 

 to the countenances of your people, upon which I so love to 

 dwell as an English landscape. (Applause.) There are those 

 marks of permanence and good living around you which cannot 

 be the work of a day. It takes centuries to grow such a 

 country as England, and no new country can compare with it. 

 Your habits of life are also different. This country, if I may 

 use a homely expression, is like a well-to-do gentleman in 

 middle-life, who has made his fortune, and sat down under 

 his own vine and fig-tree to enjoy himself; while America is 

 like a young stripling, barely out of his time, who has gone 

 out to seek his fortune — full of the spirit of unrest, uneasy, 

 anxious for change, desirous of doing something else besides 

 what his fathers have done, and desirous of trying all sorts of 

 experiments. This is the paramount and marked distinction 

 between this country and our own. This is a conservative 

 country; ours is a country that has no conservatism— I had 

 almost said, if we had the best thing, we should want to try 

 and see if there was not something better. (Laughter.) The 

 Englishman, when he builds a house, lays the foundations 

 deep, and calculates not only for his own time, but for his son, 

 and for his children's children, down to remote posterity. He 

 supposes that they wUl live upon the same acres, and in the 

 same house; and it is so with us, a man who builds a house 

 goes out west. He buys his land for a dollar and twenty-five 

 cents, or 53., an acre; for that sum he takes the fee-simple 

 from the government, and buys the land for himself and his 

 heirs forever. He looks round, with his axe upon his shoulder; 

 he sees the forest, and without thinking about beautiful shades 

 and lines of trees, he considers how he shall get a crop off the 

 land f jr himself and his children. He lays about, right and 

 left, and makes a clearing. He chops the trees down, if he has 

 time ; if he has not time he cuts the bark off, so that they die, 

 and dig?.-in his Indian corn. Corn means nothing in mv 



country but Indian corn ; if we mean anything else, we give 

 it some kind of a Christian name. (Laughter.) Well, he digs- 

 in his Indian corn ; the roots don't trouble him ; and in ten 

 years' time — if he is a good, smart man, and if fever and ague 

 don't assail him — he gets enough not only to support himself 

 and his family, but also money enough to repay every dollar he 

 paid for his land. This is his house; but he does not stop 

 there. You will think he might be content ; but no : a village 

 springs up around him — other people from the east arrive— a 

 school-house and a church are built — more people collect 

 around them, and the village becomes a city. Let me state a 

 fact or two with regard to the city of Chicago. The city of 

 Chicago lays at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and twenty-one 

 years ago it was a wilderness. In 1850 there were 38,600 

 persons in Chicago; in 1855, when the census was taken, 

 there were 88,000 people in it; and now in 1857, it is thought, 

 if the population were enumerated, that there would be found 

 to be more than 100,000 persons where twenty-one years since 

 there was not a habitable dwelling. The man who went out 

 close to the city of Chicago and planted his wheat-field thsre, 

 of 100 and 200 acres, now that his land which cost one dollar 

 and 25 cents, is worth £25,000 an acre, does not, of course, 

 cultivate wheat nor grow Indian corn there : he sells out on 

 speculation, and goes west. Chicago is only the begiauiog of 

 going west — and he starts and founds a city somewhere else. 

 This is not exactly like the stationary, stable system of old 

 England. It is a kind of life which you have no idea 

 of, and yet it is the common life of western settlem.ent8. 

 This spirit of unrest, as it may be denominated, has its good 

 and bad sides. Its good points are, that it peoples, civilizes. 

 Christianizes, and enriches the world : its bad points are, 

 that home-influences are not regarded, and are not felt as 

 they are in a more stable and older country. I am afraid, my 

 Lord, that I may be tedious (No, no). Perhaps in our agri- 

 culture you would see a wider difference than in any other 

 point. You would see the difference between the old and the 

 new ; you would see, in short, the difference between system 

 and no system ; for it is just exactly that. The fact is— and I 

 am willing to proclaim it, when I go home, upon the house* 

 tops — you understand the business of farming a good deal 

 better than we understand it in our country. We have much 

 to learn of you ; and this is my mission, to try and learn 

 something (applause). If a man could buy as good land as 

 the sun ever shone upon for 5s. an acre, you would not expect 

 him to lay out £5 upon an old acre to make it half as good as 

 a new one. But the fact is, that thousands of acres of the 

 lands taken at the Government price of 5s. an acre have been 

 planted 30 years with Indian corn and wheat without the crop 

 perceptibly diminishing. They are bottom-lands, where pro- 

 bably rivers once flowed, and are called river-bottom lauds. 

 But even these soils may be exhausted in time. And we have 

 found in New England, where we have been 200 years (a long 

 time for America) that in our old fields the system of taking 

 everything oflf and putting nothing in begins to fail. We find 

 we must apply manure if we wish to getr any crops, and we 

 are looking anxiously round to see whether we can stay 

 there, or whether we must go west and desert the works 

 which we have been two hundred years in rearing. It is by 

 a careful observation, I think, of the agriculture of this 

 country that we must profit more than in any other respect. 

 In passing over your grounds to-day I noticed at every step 

 the difference between the old coimtry and the new. Every 

 one of the implements which I observed here marks this 

 difference. Your implements are of perfect workmanship. 

 I have been in the warehouse of my friend, Mr. Eansome, 

 where many of them are made, and I see there is a great 



