vindicatiou of the rights and interests of Amer- 

 ican Agricaltnre ! 



While Law, Medicine, Mechanics, Commerce, 

 and other trades and sciences, had their presses 

 to proclaim their discoveries — to cultivate their 

 peculiar literature — to assert ilieir usefulness — 

 to challenge the public confidence, and to exert 

 tlieir control over public opinion and the legis- 

 lation of tlie country- — not an organ was sounded 

 to instigate improvements in American Hus- 

 bandry, and assert the preponderating claims of 

 the great producing class to public considera- 

 tion, and to a proportionate share in all exercises 

 of power calculated to afiect the welfare of the 

 Republic ! — no ! not a solitary press, that the 

 American husbandman could call his own, until 

 the humble individual who now addresses you, 

 though occupied tlirongh the day in the dis- 

 charge of an important public trust, determined, 

 hit or miss, to make the experiment, and to see 

 whetherthe agricultural community mightnot be 

 brought to indicate a consciousness that they, too, 

 had an interest to be exemplified, acknowledged 

 and sustained ; as the one in which reside, after 

 all, and above all, the sinews of national power 

 and the fountain of all national prosperity — an 

 experiment to see ^^•hether they wdfild be con- 

 tent to be for ever regai-ded as mere " hewers 

 of wood and dra^ve^s of water" for subordinate 

 and parasitical classes, or whether they would 

 not rise in a spirit wortliy of independent tillers 

 of the soil, and let tlie country understand that 

 they, too, had an occupation of surpassing use- 

 fulness; a J-, and as susceptible as any other of 

 taking the polish of Literature, of exemplifying 

 the principles of Philosophy, of clotliing the na- 

 ked and of feeding the hungry, and. above all 

 others, entitled to engage the care and to pxer- 

 cise its proportionate share of the power of 

 Government ! 



Such, my friends, was the origin — such has 

 been the constancy — of my zeal in the cause of 

 the Plow; and thus it may have been that 

 my humble name has reached you, and %vill ac- 

 count for what might othei-wise appear as 

 strange to yon as it \\'as altogether unexpected 

 to me. But, if tliei-e be in tliis assembly any 

 who have come in expectation of having their 

 imaginations warmed, as by my learned prede- 

 cessors. v^-itli glowing eulogies on Agriculture, 

 and splendid narratives of how, 



" In ancient times the pacied plow employed 

 The kin^s and awl'ul fathci-s of mankind," 

 all such will have too much reason to regret that 

 your choice has fallen on one who, in all his ef- 

 forts to promote our common object, has aimed 

 no higher than to suggest what seemed useful 

 in a plain, practical waj'. But though my 

 hope has been to promote improvements in the 

 practice, by an early and wide dissemination 

 of all improvements in the art of Agriculture, j 



that has not been mj' only — I had w ell-nigh said, 

 my prir.cipal aim. No, my friends ! it has been 

 my ambition, vain tliough it may have proved, 

 to assist in awakening American farmers to a 

 sense of the obligation they are under to them- 

 selves and their children, to tlieir calling and 

 their country, to kave the rising generation in- 

 structed in the diifereut sciences and the various 

 literature that belong to their own, as an intel- 

 lectual and liberal pursuit, instead of being re- 

 garded as a mere mechanical, imitative drudge- 

 ry, wth which the mind had no concern. 



Yes, gentlemen, measures should be taken to 

 have taught in our schools, combined with some 

 practice of Agriculture and Horticulture, the out- 

 lines at least, of Geology and Chemistry, that 

 something may be known of the cou.stitueut 

 parts and elements of soils and plants, and in 

 the selection of manures with reference to both. 



For the many years that I have written, con 

 amove, on your pursuit, I have endeavored to 

 spread my own persuasion, tliat eveiy parent 

 whose son is destined for tlie plow, should be 

 careful to have him taught at school, and if pos- 

 sible, too, at his own fireside, the natural, botan- 

 ical. commercial, and economical histoiy and uses, 

 and tlie medical and other properties of every 

 ti-ee, plant, fruit, gi-ain, vegetable, insect, fowl or 

 animal, that he raises or cultivates or catches or 



kills — from what countiy they came what 



is their congenial climate, or to what one they 

 may be transplanted and reconciled — how far 

 tliey have been, or may be made subjects of 



commerce, or materials of manufactures 



v.'hether in the case of plants, they are valuable 

 as food for or are designed only to clothe man or 

 beast — whether though medicinal, they may not 

 yet be poisonous, as most medicinal plants are ; 

 and, therefore, to be cautiously used, not ex- 

 tirpated. A slight knowledge of botany, for 

 example, would instruct him tliat our in- 

 valuable potato, tlie boast of our continent, is 

 a prominent representative of an order of ve- 

 getables, many of which are as deadly 

 poisonous as the potato is, itself, eminently 

 nutritive and wholesome. Among tlie mem- 

 bers of this family, he would learn to re- 

 cognize the deadly nightshade, and the bitter 

 sweet, of which there are beautiful specimens 

 covering summer arbors in the gardens of Sara- 

 toga. — So arc of the same faniilj-, tobacco, and 

 the dangerous Siramoninm or Jamestown 

 weed, which I have seen growing in such lux- 

 uriance near this town. A knowledge of its 

 poisonous qualities would witliin my own ob- 

 servation have saved tlie bitter angtiish of two 

 parents whom I once met on the road in my 

 native county, following two lovely boys, broth- 

 ers, on their way to a common grave, there, as 

 in life, to sleep in each oJiers aims, but now to 

 sleep forever in their ' naiTow home." In tlieir 



