PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



AGRICULTURE is the first and most important of all arts. Though not more 

 honorable nor more innocent than many other arts and professions, yet it is per 

 fectly innocent, and is as honorable as any. That likewise may be said of it 

 which can be said of few others, it is essential to human subsistence. We 

 shall find few persons in the community who do not at once assent to this ; but 

 often the assent is merely formal, and is not that deep and established conviction 

 which should, much more than it does, prevail throughout the community ; and 

 especially amongst those who, gifted either by talents or station, have most con 

 cern in moulding human destinies, and in adjusting the interests and forming 

 the condition of society. 



The affecting and extraordinary events of the last two years should have their 

 due influence upon every reflecting mind. In a single country, by the loss of a 

 single crop, at least five hundred thousand persons have perished, amidst the 

 accumulated horrors of starvation, or the diseases engendered and aggravated by 

 famine. Ireland has its millions of fertile acres untillcd, and its millions of 

 strong hands unemployed. Had the agriculture of Ireland been what it should 

 be, this terrible event and one more terrible does not darken the pages of 

 history could not in all human probability have happened. 



The essential character of the agricultural art is constantly pressing itself 

 upon our attention. I have had from my childhood an inclination for rural pur 

 suits. I have followed the plough many a day, with a freedom and a buoyancy 

 of spirit which seemed to have no counterpart but among the winged denizens 

 of the air, who hovered around me, and with their thrilling notes cheered me on 

 my way, and made the woods echo with their melody. I have cast the dry seed 

 into the teeming earth, and watched its first bursting above the ground, and its 

 gradual progress to maturity, recompensing every grateful attention bestowed 

 upon it, until it poured its ripened treasures into my lap, with a grateful, and, I 

 may add without presumption, a religious elevation of soul, which no language 

 could adequately express. 



