MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



level of the more favored and less productive employments. Then will the fol- 

 lowers of the plow, rising in the power and self-respect which are the offspring 

 of improved intelligence, see that provision is first, and above all, made for the 

 diffusion of knowledge (that most glorious attribute of the Deity himself — that 

 mother of all the virtues) among the cultivators of the soil, the producers of the 

 necessaries of life and the materials — the woof and the warp — of universal pros- 

 perity. In this enlightenment of the yeomanj-y of the country, and in this alone, 

 must we look, not merely for the prosperity, but for the security and preservation 

 of the Republic itself. Until that provision is made, your course as a free and 

 independent nation will be as capricious, your destiny as uncertain, as the ship 

 on the ocean without chart or compass. In halcyon weather, she may spread 

 abroad her white sails to the favoring breeze, and all on board rejoice in her 

 promising career ; but ere the dawning of another day she may bilge on hidden 

 rocks, or be swept from the bosom of the ocean " as chaff that the storm cat- 

 rieth away." 



For my own part, I should never tire of dwelling on the importance of begin- 

 ning at the root, by suitable preparation of the rising generation, for realizing all 

 great national improvements. By particular ablutions, you may wash away the 

 dust or pestiferous insects from the branches of your trees, but if you would give 

 vigor to the stem, and impart to them fruitfulness and longevity, you must culti- 

 vate and manure at the root. Yes, my friends, I even hold with confidence that 

 no nation is to be considered on the high road of national progress, or secure in 

 the enjoyment of its liberties, until its people shall come, with Solomon, to con- 

 sider " wisdom as the principal thing," and to honor and recompense those whose 

 glorious office it is to disseminate useful and virtuous knowledge, as among the 

 greatest benefactors of the human race, when their office is properly understood 

 and faithfully executed. And, may I not emphatically ask you, who is entitled 

 lo the highest honor and the most liberal reward : the well qualified, conscien- 

 tious instructor of youth, he on whom you have devolved the highest, the noblest 

 of all trusts, that of imbuing your son with useful knowledge, such as will make 

 him an honor to his parents and his country, and a benefactor to mankind — or 

 they whose duty it is, in execution of the wise, or it may be Avicked, policy of 

 rulers, to shed the blood of their fellow creatures, or those again, who live by 

 the contentions and the maladies of their fellow men? Does any one now-a- 

 days dare the insulting inquiry, what occasion has the farmer for book knowledge ? 

 Who could believe it possible that an experimental and intellectual pursuit like 

 Agriculture has no necessity for special education — no occasion to be familiar 

 with the accumulated and recorded experience of ages, and the discoveries that 

 every age brings forth ? 



If to be an eminent farmer only requires good manipulations of the present 

 modes of Agriculture, without any hope of improvement from science, to lead 

 and direct practice, then indeed the business of Agriculture has arrived at a point 

 to repel liberally educated men from pursuing it as an occupation. That science 

 has hitherto done but little directly for Agriculture is freely confessed ; but how 

 long has science been directly devoted to this object ? The time has been so short, 

 and the difficulties of the subject so great— so little has been done for it by public 

 sentiment, and so much less by public legislation— it has been so postponed for 

 all other interests, that the wonder is not that Davy, and Boussingault, and Petz- 

 holdt, and Liebig, and Johnstone, and Thaer, and our own Sillinian, and Tay- 

 lor, and Hitchcock, and Dana, and Teschemacher. and Ruffin, and Buel, have 



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