413 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



[No. 7 



away. If this pays, surely the retaining the sugar, 

 and only partiii<? with the deleterious particles, will 

 pay piiil better; fur, as to the expense of the 

 operation, it will cost no more to periorrn it well 

 than inpfliriently. 



It will he recollected, too, that the aninnal char- 

 coal, ashes, &c., made use of in the manufactory, 

 are valuable additions to '.he manure of a farm, 

 and, in the opinion of n)any, fully counterbalance 

 any loss occasioned by the deprivation of the sac- 

 charine matter contained in the roots. 



From the Papers of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle. 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE AGRI- 

 CULTURAL SOCIETY OF ALBEMARLE, (VA.) 

 ON TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1819. BY MR. MAD- 

 ISON, PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 



It having pleased the Society to name me for 

 their presiding member, I leel it a duty, on my 

 first appearing among j'ou, to repeat my acknow- 

 ledgements, lor tliat honorary disiinciion; with 

 , the assurances of my sincere desire to promote 

 the success of au establishment, which has in 

 view so valuable an object as that of improving 

 the agriculture of our country. 



The faculty ofcultivating the earth, and of rear- 

 ing animals, by which food is increased beyond 

 the spontaneous supplies of nature, belongs to 

 man alone. No olher terrestrial being has re- 

 ceived a higher gift than an instinct, like that of 

 the beaver or the ant, which merely hoards for 

 future use the Ibod spontaneously furnished by 

 nature. 



As this peculiar faculty gives to man a pre-emi- 

 nence over irrational animals, so it is the use 

 made of it by some, and the neglect of if by other 

 communities, that distinguish them from each oth- 

 er, in the most important features of the human 

 character. 



The contrast between the enlightened and re- 

 fined nations on some parts of the earih, and ihe 

 rude and wretched tribes on others, has its foun- 

 dation in this distinction. Civilization is never 

 Been without agriculture nor has agriculture ever 

 prevailed, where the civilized arts did not make 

 their appearance. 



But closely as agriculture and civilization are al- 

 lied, they do not keep pace with each other. 

 There is probably a much higher state of agri- 

 culture in China and Japan, than in many other 

 countries far more advanced in the improvements 

 of civilized life. It is surely no small reproach to 

 ihe latter, that with so great a superiority in sci- 

 ence, and in the fuller possession of the auxiliary 

 arts, they should suffer themselves to be outstrip- 

 ped in the very art by which both are essentially 

 distinguished from the brute creation. 



It must not be inferred, however, from the capa- 

 cities and the motives of man for an artificial in- 

 crease of the productions of the earth, that the 

 transition from the hunter, or even the herdsman 

 state, to the agricultural, is a matter of course. 

 The first steps in this transition are attended 

 with difficulty, and what is more, with disinclina- 

 tion. 



Without the knowledge of the metals, and the 

 implements made of them, the process o( open- 

 ing and stirring the soil, is not an easy operation; 

 though one, perhaps not requiring "more effort 



and contrivance, than produced the instruments 

 used by savages in war and in the chase. 



And that there is a disinclination in human na- 

 ture to exchange the savage lor the civilized life, 

 cannot be questioned. We need not look for 

 proofs beyond our own neighborhood. The In- 

 dian tribes have ever shown an aversion to the 

 change. Neither the persuasive exaniples ofplen- 

 fy and comfort derived iVom ihe culture of the earth 

 by their white brethren, nor the lessons and spe- 

 cimens of tillage placed in the midst of them, and 

 seconded by actual sufferings from a deficient and 

 precarious subsistence, have diverted them from 

 their strong propensities and habitual pursuits. In 

 the same spirit, they always betray an anxious dis- 

 position to return to their pristine lile, atier being 

 weaned from it by time, and apparently moulded 

 by intellectual and moral instruction, into the ha- 

 bits and lastes of an aiiricultural people. A still 

 more conclusive evidence of 'he bias of human 

 nature, is seen in the lamiliar fact, that our own 

 people nursed and reared in these habits and 

 tastes, easily slide into those of the savage, and 

 are rarely reclaimed to civilized society with their 

 own consent. 



Had the Europeans, on their arrival, found this 

 continent destitute of human mhabitants, whose 

 dangerous neiirhborhood kept them in a compact 

 and agricultural siate, and had their communica- 

 tion with the countries they left, been discontinu- 

 ed, they might have spread themselves into the 

 forests where irame and fruits would have abound- 

 ed; and gradually forgetting the arts no longer 

 necssary to their immediate wants, have degene- 

 rated into savage tribes. 



An admired historian,* in his inquiry into the 

 origin of the American savages, represents any 

 such degeneracy as impossible. He lays it down 

 as a certain principle, that the necessary arts of 

 life, when once introduced among a people, can 

 never be lost, that the dominion over inlerior ani- 

 mals once enjoyed will never be abandoned; and 

 that America, consequently, must have been peo- 

 pled fl-om a country as uncivilized as itself Yet 

 he derives the American savages, generally, from 

 the Tartars, whose example must have taught 

 ihem the use of certain animals, for which a sub- 

 stitute might have been found in the bison or 

 buffalo at least, (the same animal with tlie cow,) 

 if not in the elk, the moese, or the caraboo. 

 And he regards the Esquimaux, a tribe distin- 

 guished in several respects for their rude condi- 

 tion, as descendants from the Greenlanders, of 

 the same modes of life with themselves who 

 were a colonj' fi-om Norway, planted in the 9tli 

 century; an epoch prior to which the Novvegians 

 iiad made such progress in the arts as to be capa- 

 ble of formidable maritime expeditions. The 

 Greenland colony, therefore, must have under- 

 gone a degeneracy Irom the condition of its pa- 

 rent country. Without supposing the possibility 

 of a transition from a better state of human soci- 

 ety, to a savage state, how would the learned his- 

 torian have accounted for the introduction of the 

 savage state at all? 



The bent of human nature mav be traced on 

 the chart of our own country. The manufactu- 

 rer readily exchanires the loom for the |»loui>h, in 

 opposition often, to his own interest, as wefl as to 



*Dr. Robertson. 



