FARMERS REGISTER. 



757 



yond the limits assigned to these essay=!. It \>- 

 one hifflily necessury ti> all practical men, am- 

 worthy ot" liie minnte consideration of I lie most 

 prolbund mind; r,or do I know one exiiibiiing to 

 experience and talents a stronger invitation to 

 make tliemselves usefiii. 



THE PLEASURES OF AGRICULTURE 



In free countries are more, and in enslaved 

 lewer, than the pleasures of most other employ- 

 ments. The reason oC it is, that agriculture both 

 from its nature, and also as being generally the 

 employment ofa great portion of a nation, cannot 

 be united with power, considered as an exclusive 

 interest. It must of course be enslaved, wherever 

 . despotism exists, and its masters will enjoy more 

 pleasures in that case, than it can ever reach. On 

 the contrary, where power is not an exclusive, but 

 a general interest, agriculture can employ its own 

 energies for the attainment of its own happiness. 

 Under a free government it has before it the 

 inexhaustible sources of hnm^n pleasure, of fitting 

 ideas to fubstances, and substances to ideas; and 

 of a constant rotation of hope and fruition. 



The novelty, liequency and exactness of ac- 

 commodations between our ideas and operations, 

 constitute the most exquisite source of men'al 

 pleasure. Agriculture feeds it with endless sup- 

 plies in the natures of soils, plants, climate.*, ma- 

 nures, instruments of culture and domestic ani- 

 mals. Their combinations are inexhaustible, the 

 novelty of resul's is endless, discrimination and 

 adaptation are never idle, and an unsatiated interest 

 receives gratifications in quick succession. 



Benevolence is so closely associated with this 

 interest, that its exertion in numberless ir.stances, 

 ia necessary to Ibster it. Liberality in supplying 

 its laborers with the comforts of life !=• the best 

 sponsor for the prosperiij' of agriculture, and the 

 practice of almost every moral virtue is amply 

 remunerated in this world, whilst it is also the 

 best surety (or at'aining the blessings of the next. 

 Poetry, in allowing more virtue to agriculture, 

 than to any other profession, has abandoned her 

 privilege of fiction, and yielded to the natural 

 moral efTeot of the absence of temptation. The 

 same fact is commemorated by religion, upon an 

 occasion the most solemn, within the scope of the 

 hun)an imagination. At the awful day of judg- 

 ment, the discrimination of tlie good from the i and the hopeless habit of confiding our ereafest 

 wicked, is not made by the criterion of sects or of I interest to people most ignorant of if, will beaban- 

 dogmas, but by one wiiich constitutes the daily i doned. 



employment and the great end of agriculture, j The errors of politicians ignorant ofagriculture, 

 The Judge upon this occasion has by anticipation | or their projects designed to opfiress it, can only 

 pronounced, that to feed the hungry, clothe the i rob it of its pleasures, and consign it to contempt 

 naked, and give drink to the thirsty, are the pas- and misery. This revolution of its natural state, 

 eports to future happiness ; and tlie divine inielli- is invariably affected by war, armies, heavy taxes, 



a system of agriculture which doubles the fertility 

 of a country, and a succosslu! war which doubles 

 Its territory. By the first the territory itself' is also 

 -ubstantinlly doubled, without wasting the lives, 

 the wealth, or the liberty of the nation which haa 

 thus subdued sterility, and drawn prosperity fiom 

 a willing source. JBy the si'cond, the l)lood pre- 

 tended lo be enriclied, is spilt ; the wealth pre- 

 tended to be increased, is wasted ; the liberty said 

 lo be secured, is immolated lo the patriotism of a 

 victorious army ; and desolation in every form ia 

 made to stalk in the glittering garb of false izlory, 

 throughout some neighboring country. Moral 

 law decides the preference with undeviating con- 

 sistency, in assigning to the nation, which elects 

 true patriotism, the recompense of truth, and to 

 the electors of the false, ilie expiation of error. 

 To the respective agents, the same law assio^ns 

 the remorses of a conqueror, and the quiet con- 

 science of the agriculturist. 



The capacity of agriculture for affording luxu- 

 ries to the body, is not loss conspicuous than its 

 capacity fi^r affording luxuries to the mind ; it 

 being a science singularly possessing the double 

 qualities of feeding with unbounded liberality, 

 both the moral appetites of the one, and the 

 physical wants of the other. It can even feed a 

 morbid love of money, whilst it is liabituatinir us 

 to the practice of virtue ; and whilst it provides 

 for the wants of the philosopher, it affords him 

 ample room for the most curions and yet useful 

 researches. In short, by the exercise it gives both 

 to the body and to the mind, it secures health and 

 vigor to both ; and by combining l\ thorough 

 knowledge of the real affairs of life, with a neces- 

 sity for investigating the arcana of nature, and the 

 strongest invitations lo the practice of morality, it 

 becomes the best architect of a complete man. 



If this eulogy should succeed in awakening tlie 

 attention of men of science to a skilful practice, 

 ofagriculture, they will become models for indivi- 

 duals, and guardians for national happiness. The 

 discoveries of the learned will be practised by the 

 ignorant; and a S3'stem which sheds happiness, 

 plenty and virtue all around, will be gradually 

 substituted for one which fosters vice, breeds want, 

 and begets misery. 



Politicians (who ought fo know tlie most, and 

 cenerally know the least, of a science in which the 

 United States are more deeply interested than in 

 any other) will appear, of.more practical know- 

 ledge, or at least of belter theoretical instruction; 



gence which selected an agricultural state as a 

 paradise for its first favorites, has here again pre- 

 scribed the agricultural virtues as the means for 

 the admission of their posterity into heaven. 



or exclusive privilefrcs. In two cases alone, have 

 nations ever gained any thing by war. Those of 

 repelling invasion and emigrating into a mora 

 fruitful territory. In every other case, the indus- 



With the pleasures of religion, agriculture I trious of all professions sufTer by war, the effecta 

 unites those of patriotism, and among the worthy ; of which, in its modern form, are precisely the 

 competitors for pre-eminence in the practice of : same to the victorious and the vanquished nation, 

 this cardinal virtue, a profound author assigns a I The least evil to be apprehended firom victorious 

 high station to him who has made two blades ! armies, is a permanent system of heavy taxation, 

 of grass grow instead of one; an idea capable of; than which, nothing can more vitally wound or 

 a signal amplification, by a comparieon between I kill the pleasures ofagriculture. Of the same 

 VoL.VIII.-96 



