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Never turn your backs, farmers, on the Town-hall. 

 Never lose a vote. Take a lesson from your own craft. 

 Try a political candidate by his back-bone. Give the 

 crafty and supple dodger the outside row. Treat the 

 drones as the bees do. Understand the men that are set 

 up for office, and if they are not true men who can show 

 you an honest eye, and a brave conscience, take care to set 

 them gently down again. See that agriculture gets as 

 much honor from legislatures as institutions that are more 

 showy and talkative. Read state papers and public de- 

 bates. Avoid that wasteful economy which shortens the 

 post-office bill, to lengthen the lawyer's. In these times, 

 an agricultural people may know public men, and the 

 true bearings of public events, as well as the busy throngs 

 that trample pavements. There is no genuine reform 

 that is not on the farmer's side, and he is bound to be a 

 reformer of the constructive kind. Kespect for law is in- 

 stilled into him by the benignant regularity of seed-time 

 and harvest. He wants no bullets nor hoofs of war in his 

 meadows and nurseries, and no war-taxation thrusting its 

 bloody fingers into his pocket. Reserve your destructive 

 enginery for the weeds and caterpillars. He is exhorted 

 to temperance by all the intimacy of his habits with 

 nature. Commerce is his common carrier, and asks his 

 protection. Manufactures and metropolis are his market; 

 the jealousy that would cripple them w^rongs himself And 

 all his life, the free winds and open sky over his head 

 nurse in him that vigorous loyalty to republican liberty, 

 that sympathy for the struggles of freedom everywhere, 

 and that intense and rooted abhorrence of all slavery and 

 despotism, which are the birthright of his blood, the in- 

 stinct of his calling, and the inspiration of his soul. 



HI. By this public spirit, by disinterested patriotism, 

 and a faithful conscience towards human welfare, the farm- 

 er will already have begun to feel holier ties attracting 



