290 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



in civil life, whose inventions have brought l.inded capital into profltableaclivity> 

 and created for manufacturing and commercial enterprise their greatest facilities? 



Beyond the precarious, ill-secured and insufficient immunities of a patent-right 

 — which, if worth the expense of procuring, is sure to be set upon by pirates, as 

 the eagle is assailed by the meanest of the feathered race — we may demand to 

 know what honorary distinction or recompense has been voted by the people or 

 bestowed by the Government of the United States on those whose labor-saving 

 contrivances have multiplied the products of agricultural industry, and facilitated 

 the exchanges of internal and of foreign commerce, and (he spread of knowledge ? 

 Where are the votes of thanks, the medals and the pensions voted to authors 

 and investigators in the natural and useful sciences ? or' to those patriots who as- 

 sisted in laying the foundation of our great civil structure ? or to those again, few 

 and far between, who have gathered up and luminously arranged the scattered 

 and fading lights of our national history ? Look at Prescott, for example, who, 

 though physically blind, has shed such a blaze of light on the first " Conquest 

 of Mexico," reflecting in his history all the incidents of that great event, from its 

 inception to its close, as faithfully as the image is reflected by the mirror, and 

 establishing for his country another, if not her highest, claim to etminenl rank in 

 the republic of letters ! Yet may it not be doubted whether his name would be 

 allowed to find a place in any resolution of Congressional thanks, so freely voted 

 to the youngest warrior whom fortune may have favored with a chance to flesh 

 his maiden sword in Mexican blood ! And are such to be forever our proofs of 

 popular discernment — such our manifestations of republican justice ? But to the 

 subject of our memoir, if only to show that one pen, at least, is ready, however 

 inadequately, to render the tribute which is due to the memory of a countryman 

 whom history will rank, for his inventive talents, along with poor heart-broken 

 Fitch, and Rumsey, and Clinton and Fulton, all as having Ji^ded incalculable 

 measure to the wealth and power of their country. 



Eli Whitney was born December 8th, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts, 

 where, and in the same house, some of the family still reside. His parents be- 

 longed to that middle class which in New-England, above all countries, consti- 

 tutes the mass — the bone and sinews of society. By the habitual diligence and 

 frugality which may be said to characterize the people of that venerable Com- 

 monv/ealth, they managed to provide well for their family. It is from that class 

 that have arisen most of those in ISew-England who have attained high eminence 

 and usefulness ; nor, as it has been well said, is any other situation in society so 

 favorable to the early formation of those habits of economy, both of time and of 

 money, which, when carried forward into the study of the scholar, or the various 

 fields of active enterprise, afford the surest pledge of success. Thus it is that 

 those who have attended the annual Fairs in New-England must have observed, 

 with admiration, that the plows and carls contending, always with ox teams, 

 are usually managed by their owners in person and unassisted — being every-day 

 ■working farmers ; such as compose also their Committees of Judges, who often 

 draw up, on the spur of the occasion, well-written and lucid reports. From Sec- 

 retary Pickering to Senators Webster and Davis, most of their most distinguished 

 men have been reared in the performance of all the practical operations of New- 

 England husbandry. 



As biography would lose much of its entertainment, as well as its usefulness, 

 if it did not relate incidents in themselves trivial, but which serve at once lo 

 show or to confirm the youthful bent of the character, we shall accordingly re- 



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