MEfllORIAL. 261 



but to an object strictly analogous to the one we seek, to wit, the annual Agri' 

 cultural Reports from the Patent-Office. 



All these appropriations of the public money — chiefly, it is true, as connected 

 with the military operations of the Government — have been avowedly for the 

 purpose of collecting and distributing warlike or other information. 



These facts and considerations induce your memorialists to hope that Congress 

 will not now refuse to the people a portion of their own money, for the purpose 

 of providing within each State, conformably with its own policy, institutions and 

 courses of industry, schools for the instruction, also, of the risinir generation of 

 planters and farmers in the principles of ihdii great pursuit which has been well 

 pronounced " the nursing mother of all the arts," — a pursuit upon which Con- 

 gressional Reports, useful though they be in their way, can yet throw but the 

 partial light of facts and statements promiscuously gathered up, not always well 

 digested, and, after all, distributed or not, according to the individual pleasure 

 and discretion of Members of Congress. 



For the warlike machinery and purposes of this Republican Government, em- 

 bracing the objects above referred to, several hundred millio?is of dollars have 

 been expended since our last war with a trans Atlantic power ; and this enormous 

 expenditure has really been collected, in very large proportion, from the landed 

 interest, since it is that class which has chiefly consumed the imports on which 

 the revenue has been levied. 



Your memorialists are far from repining at the liberal pay, life commissions, 

 certain promotion, pensions, residences, hospitals, schools and academies huilt, 

 provided, and kept up, at the public expense, for the tAvo military branches of the 

 Government ; but they humbly think that the time has arrived when the people, 

 the yeomanry of the country — those by v.^hose toil its solid wealth is dug out of 

 the ground — may inquire why, in what view of the " general wellare," it is that 

 since any amount can be found to promote advancement in the science, and suc- 

 cessful practice in the art of war, nothing can be granted for the better instruc- 

 tion of the rising generation of freemen in the science and practice of that great 

 peaceful pursuit which employs, feeds and pays all others? 



Under the most despotic monarchies, men of genius who have conferred signal 

 benefits on the industrial pursuits of the people, by scientific discoveries and use- 

 ful inventions, have been lavishly rewarded, and raised to the highest honors. — 

 Mechanics, chemists, astronomers, great naturalists, and learned and enterprising 

 men in every walk of civil life, have been there endowed with titles and fortune. 

 If, under such Governments, stars and garters, and badges of power and respect, 

 have stimulated to heroic deeds in fields of battle, so have they been held up as 

 certain prizes to intellectual excellence, and great accomplishments in the arts 

 and employments of peaceful industry. If schools have there been maintained 

 for training youth in the art of war, so have they been maintained for teaching 

 the application of the arts and sciences to all the industrial pursuits of life. 



As republican freeholders, then, we would respectfully inquire whether it be 

 becoming or politic for this nation, whose Government rests lor security on the 

 popular intelligence, to imitate European Governments only in the favor and pat- 

 ronage they confer, with seli-preserving instinct, on that Executive department 

 of their power upon which they lean to protect their existence against the progress 

 of free principles, and the force of public opinion seeking to carry iheni out ? 



It would indeed be passing strange, as it seems to your memorialists, that in a 

 Government called free, deriving so chiefly all its resources from the airricultural 

 interest, its powers should be so organized as to preclude the application of any 

 portion of the public treasure to confessedly, and by far, the greatest of all public 

 concerns ! We would respectfully forbear from remarking, as it would seem to 

 deserve, on that monstrous perversion and abuse of sovereign authority, in a Gov- 

 ernment called republican, which should reserve all life tenures, and all pensions, 

 and all enlightenment, for the military, while it renounces the glorious faculty 

 of aiding and rewarding the labors of intellect in the humbler, but so much more 

 useful paths of peaceful, laborious and productive industry ! 



In behalf, then, not so much of thejnselves, as of the rising generation of agri- 

 culturists, on whom our country and its liberties must mainly depend under all 

 vicissitudes, we call upon you, to whom Ave have consigned for the time the sov- 

 ereign authority of the State, to demand from the General Government that some- 

 thing be now, at last, done to foster Agriculture, by diilusing that knowledge 



(549) J o ' J a = 



