ROUGH NOTES, FROM THE "WEST. 



BY DR. JOHN A. KENNICOTT, OF THE GROVE, ILL. 



Your leader, for April, is above all praise, 

 because it is not only thoughtful and truth- 

 ful, but bold and liberal. We, of the west, 

 had hoped for this at your hands, but scarce 

 expected it. For one, who believes he 

 speaks the sentiments of many, I thank you. 



The agricultural press does " begin to feel 

 that it is of some account in the common- 

 wealth;" and it will, ere long, teach " the 

 farming class" to know and assert "its 

 rights in the state." 



It is a law of nature, that all have a right 

 to life, and the liberty to pursue happiness, 

 provided that we neither injure or interfere 

 with the rights of others. And at this day, 

 when the race of men is improving in the 

 mental, more rapidly than some other ani- 

 mals are improved in the physical; in an 

 age when nothing is impossible — when 

 utility and the laws of progress, not " old 

 custom," govern all things — education — 

 "knowledge is" not only "power" and 

 wealth, but happiness. The indigent farm- 

 er has, therefore, the same right to pursue 

 this sort of happiness as he " born with a 

 silver spoon in his mouth." And he has 

 the same political rights to colleges for his 

 specific education as the divine, the lawyer, 

 the doctor and the soldier; all of whom 

 have been more or less provided for by 

 government. 



And I have even heard it hinted by some 

 bold farmers, who are in the habit of think- 

 ing and calculating, (a notion bred of this 

 same agricultural press, I fancy,) that we 

 have a somewhat better political right to 

 the patronage of government than all other 

 classes put together; for we greatly out- 

 count them at the polls. And then, we can 



plead in extenuation of this rash thought, 

 the musty old maxim, that the services of 

 the farmer and the mechanic are those 

 alone naturally indispensable to the exist- 

 ence of the immense mass of human beings 

 now brightening the glad earth, as they no 

 longer creep, but fly over it, in their course 

 towards the setting sun, and the perfection 

 (whichmust happen somewhere in the twen- 

 tieth century,) of the Anglo-Saxon race. 



We ask Congress for an Agricultural 

 Bureau, connected with the machinery of 

 our government. We ask a mere trifle. It 

 will not cost so much as the maintainance 

 of a sloop of war, in full commission, nor 

 half as much as the interest on the expen- 

 ditures for the construction of a single har- 

 bor and military fortification on our Atlan- 

 tic sea-board ; and this slight aid to agri- 

 culture and horticulture would form, if no- 

 thing else, a nucleus — a central office, or 

 general agency for all the state agricultural 

 and horticultural societies — where all could 

 meet on common ground, to which all 

 could report, and from which the collec- 

 tions of facts, and things, from all parts of 

 the world, could re-emanate in a condensed, 

 or proportioned form, and find their way 

 equally, and without cost, to all interested 

 throughout the Union. 



It is to be hoped that the present Congress 

 will see this affair in its true light, and act 

 as becomes our representatives, and the 

 great interests connected with agricultural 

 improvements, and "the fine arts of rural 

 life." We have never been obtrusive. We 

 have never seriously demanded aid ; for we 

 have expected it would be spontaneously 

 given, as soon as we were prepared to re- 



