CHEMISTRY. 309 



of public sentiment and the circumstances of the times and the country. But let 

 us ai least hope that the day will come — we trust it is not far distant — when those 

 who should have lent a joyful countenance to at least this one legislative movement 

 for the benefit of those who constitute so large a majority of the people of the 

 State, will awaken to a sense of that self-respect, failing in which men need never 

 hope to be respected by others. Where — how employed, has been the pi-ess of the 

 State, that it did not hail and encourage this one public cffurt to provide for her 

 greatest interest, that augmented power and increased prosperity which ahvays 

 flow from augmented knowledge ? Alas ! the sympatlues of the press of our 

 country are almost universally allied to and dependent upon other branches of 

 industry. Look at the buoys that have been anchored out, the light-houses that 

 have been built, the breakwaters constructed, the banks incorporated, the hospi- 

 tals erected, the schools and academies supported, surgeons and chaplains pro- 

 vided, and the vast amount of expenditure bestowed for enlightening, protecting, 

 and invigorating commercial, and warlike, and all other particular classes and 

 pursuits, while Agriculture, which supports them all, is left to grope its way in 

 the dark, like a blind giant, and is only not ridden down and killed right out 

 because then these other classes would infallibly perish. 



Agriculture, and the various classes that subsist on the fruits of agricultural 

 industry, may be likened to a great sow, with a large litter of pi^s. If you would 

 have them fatten and grow apace, she must be well fed and cared for ; but if she 

 has not sense enough to know where to find her sustenance, and is too lazy to 

 hunt for it, the litter that tug at her sides, caring only for themselves, will suck 

 out her very vitals. 



As to the advantage of special instruction in Agriculture, it is only when men 

 have the hardihood or stupidity to maintain that ignorance gives efllciency to labor, 

 and that the short-sighted man is best able to provide for the future, that they will 

 come 10 deny that the cultivation of the earth will be more successful and product- 

 ive in proportion as the youth of a country is reared in a knowledge of the sciences 

 that explain all the phenomena of animal and vegetable growth, the principles in- 

 volved in them, and the laws by which they are regulated. This being once ad- 

 mitted, and all that the friends of agricultural instruction contend for follows 

 of course. If Government has any power to protect, or what is the same 

 thing, to favor a particular class — as the military, for instance — by boarding 

 and educating them at the public expense — being virtually at the expense of the 

 landed interest — it surely ought to have the power to let that interest appropriate 

 some of its own means to the purpose of self-enlightenment in the principles of 

 its own pursuit. And which, let us ask, is the more useful appropriation of the 

 public treasure in this republican country — that which should be applied to dif- 

 fuse among farmers the mathematical principles and the knowledge of engineer- 

 ing or of chemistry, that would enable them to construct a road, or a bridge, or 

 a canal, or to build or understand the mechanism of a threshing-machine, or to 

 analyze mineral or vegetable substances in a manner to determine their fertiliz- 

 ing or nutritive qualities — or that appropriation of public money which should 

 be employed to teach our youth the art of constructing a gun-carriage, or how to 

 make a bomb-shell or a rocket? We don't ask, by the knowledge and use of 

 which does a man gain the most eclat or the highest pay, or which will the more 

 readily insure him a place for his son in the Army or the Navy, or the comforts 

 of a hospital for himself, or a pension for his wife ? We ask, which of these 

 appropriations would most conduce to the substantial interests of those uho make 

 (723^ 



