340 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



the laws and pay the taxes ? Very well do we know that if Mr. Naill, for ex- 

 ample, had himself the means of carrying out his patriotic conceptions and de- 

 signs for the benefit of Agriculture, until, by increased knowledge of all the laws 

 on which its productiveness depends, its fruits should be quadrupled from a given 

 amount of land or labor, he would yet, if overtaken by sickness and misfortune, be 

 left by thepeopleandtheGovernment of this republican country, to perish in a com- 

 mon jail ; while honors and rewaras without measure would be heaped upon 

 any man who should come reeking from the battle-field, and whose only merit 



should be that of having shed the blood of " the enemies of his country" ! ! ! 



Can any man endowed with the high, the — as we regard it — almost sacred 

 trust of legislation, the most honorable and responsible that any man can fill, un- 

 less it be that of instructor of youth — can any man so endowed with power to 

 influence the public weal, need any argument, at this time of day, to convince 

 him how absolutely and directly the success and the honor of Agriculture are 

 connected with and depend upon those who follow it, or at least those who direct 

 its operations, being trained up in familiarity with those sciences that enable us 

 to detect the nature of various soils, and the constituents that compose not them 

 merely, but all the plants we cultivate, and all the manures which the most igno- 

 rant acknowledge and apply, though without knowing why, to promote their 

 growth ? Just as well might it be said that a knowledge of anatomy is not es- 

 sential to the surgeon — that the iron-master may be ignorant of the qualities of 

 ores, and the art of smelting — or the dyer of his coloring matters, and how to fix 

 them. We don't speak of or to the common farm-laborer any more than of the 

 journeyman dyer. Both may be as ignorant as an ass, and, like an ass, be em- 

 ployed in the lowest drudgery, content to labor and be fed from day to day. — 

 AVhat we write, such as it is, we intend for gentlemen, and gentlemen's sons; 

 and by these we mean men who pride themselves and covet the distinction that 

 is to be found, not in money nor in fine clothes, but in the highest possession they 

 ■can reach of the qualities that distinguish the man from the brute — the intellect- 

 ual farmer from the unintellectual operative. It is knowledge that humanizes, 

 civilizes, elevates and adorns the human character. Ignorance brutalizes and de- 

 grades — makes men tyrannical and cruel, yet cowardly and fond of blood. We go, 

 therefore, above all things, for knowledge ; and, first of all, for knowledge of the very 

 sort that makes a man most skillful and prosperous in the very business by ivhich 

 he is to support himself and family, without which he must be miserable. For 

 the sea, he who wishes not to live and die a common sailor, learns the art of 

 navigation ; he gets acquainted with the form and magnitude of the earth— pro- 

 •cures his charts of the coasts, and maps of the harbors he may have occasion to 

 wisiU He must understand the use of instruments by which the direction in 

 wliich the ship is steered, and the distance she sails, are ascertained from day 

 to day ; and be able to deduce, from the data supplied by such instruments, the 

 situation of his ship at any time, and to find the direction and distance of any 

 place to which she is to be taken. Observe the elegance and beauty of 

 the art which forms our splendid flint-glass out of such coarse, mean ma- 

 terials as silica, potash, and oxide of lead. Now are these arts, does the read- 

 er suppose, to be acquired without study ? without exercise of the mind ? 

 without bringing into play the noble faculties that lift us above the beasts of the 

 field, and assimilate us to our Creator in tiio only way that it can be done with- 

 out an insult to Infinite perfection ? And will the farmer, the practitioner uf the 

 greatest of all arts — he who with soil, and soda, and lime, and potash, and wa- 



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