FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 9$ 



The agricultural magazines and newspapers take up the 

 matter in this stage and give all desirable notoriety to what 

 is done and doing. The knowledge of every improvement 

 is widely diffused. Increased prosperity begins to show 

 itself as the reward of increased skill and knowledge, and 

 thus the condition of the husbandman is rendered more 

 comfortable and more honorable. 



The orator then entered upon a historical survey of the 

 conditions of agriculture from the earliest times, premising 

 that with agriculture, civilization begins ; that where it does 

 not exist, progress is not possible, as is evinced in the con- 

 dition of the Arabs and the Tartars, who roam with their 

 flocks and herds over a vast region, destitute of all those 

 refinements which require for their growth a permanent 

 residence, and a community organized into the various pro- 

 fessions, arts and trades, and who are found, now, after the 

 lapse of 4000 years, in the same condition in which they ex- 

 isted in the days of Abraham. The Greeks and the Ro- 

 mans, he said, held agriculture in honor, especially the 

 latter. The farmer was with them a respected and inde- 

 pendent citizen. Cincinnatus, who was called by Livy 

 u the hope of the Roman empire," was found, when called 

 upon to take the position of supreme ruler, engaged in labor 

 upon his farm of four acres. At a later period great land- 

 holders who owned slaves were numerous; but the class 

 which tilled their own small farms did not disappear till 

 the ' overthrow of the empire by barbarous tribes. Under 

 the sway of feudalism, which followed, those who cultivated 

 the soil were serfs, attached to the soil and sold with it, as 

 the cattle of the farm. 



In the contemporary period, the orator found in Europe 

 and America (not including slaves), four classes of cultiva- 

 tors of the soil. The first in the list were serfs or the farm 

 laborers of Russia, living in conditions but little better than 

 that of the vassals under the feudal system ; the second, 

 those cultivating farms " at halves," that is for half the an- 

 nual product ; the third, the tenants of farms by lease, the 

 condition generally of farmers in England ; and the fourth, 



