FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 109 



three years successive ploughings, for deepening and 

 pulverizing; the crops to be succeeded by grain and 

 grass for two or three years more. The plough on its 

 return every five, six or seven years finds, in such case, 

 the land mellow, soft, unimplicated by root, and 

 tender in sod. The consequence is that a breaking up 

 is then done with one yoke and one man. The expense 

 is comparatively small. There is nothing to deter, 

 and everything to invite, the farmer to increase the 

 use of that most invaluable of all instruments. It 

 ought to be a principle that our farming should be so 

 systematized that all breaking up should be done with 

 one yoke of oxen and one man, who both drives and 

 directs the plough. 



Systematic agriculture also requires sufficiency of 

 hands. Although this is a plain dictate of common 

 sense, yet the want of being guided by it is one great 

 cause of ill success in our agriculture. Because we 

 hear every day that "labor runs away with profits in 

 farming," almost every farmer lays it down, as a 

 maxim, to do with as little labor as possible; and it 

 almost always results in practice in doing with less 

 than he ought. Labor wisely directed and skillfully 

 managed, can, in the nature of things, result in nothing 

 else than profit. The great secret of European success 

 in agriculture is stated to be^ "much labor on com- 

 paratively little land." Now the whole tenor of 

 Massachusetts husbandry from the first settlement of 

 the country has been, little labor on much land. Is it 

 wonderful, then, that success should be little or noth- 

 ing, when conduct is in direct violation of the principle 

 on which success depends? 



The speaker closed with a series of apothegms 

 applicable in practical agriculture. 



In 1833 Edward Everett was the orator. It may be 

 deemed certain that he had no practical knowledge of 



