440 JUDGE BUEL AND EDMUND RUFFIN. 



JUDGE BUEL AND EDMUND RUFFIN. 



The Editor of The Farmers' Library, with due deference, suggests to the 

 New- York State Agricultural Society the propriety of awarding every year, 

 for some important and worthy display of agricultural excellence, a suitable and 

 characteristic premium, to be known and contended for, as the 



BUEL PREMIUM. 



While gold medals, and costly swords, and elevated rank are bestowed by the 

 wise men of the nation out of the public funds, for distinguished success in fields 

 of battle and blood ; and gallant men are stimulated to excellence in that way, by 

 the public bestowal ofmagnihcentrewards,high pay, and merited honors for them- 

 selves and pensions for their families ; would it be out of place, we ask it most 

 respectfully, in you, who are appointed to watch over the landed interest, to offer 

 every year your leading premium in honor of him who labored so long, so zeal- 

 ously, and with so much effect, to turn the minds of the young generation to ways 

 of peace and usefulness : and to look on Agriculture not as a mean drudgery, in 

 which any clown might succeed with strong back and strong arms, but as a 

 business demanding high and varied mental attainments, and eminently condu- 

 cive to private and public morals ? 



The object might be for the best cultivated farm, or a labor-saving implement 

 or machine, displaying something new and economical in its construction. Any- 

 thing but the fattest hog, or the heaviest half-acre of corn or carrots, or the fat- 

 test bullock or biggest turnips ; unless the animal or the vegetable be reared on 

 some new and, hitherto, untried food, or new mode of preparing it, constituting 

 altogether a novel and useful discovery in rural economy. And as Mr. Ruffin 

 — whose works have been deemed worthy of being pirated on the other side of 

 the great water — does not live in the State, but has added immensely to Amer- 

 ican agricultural literature and products, it would, we most respectfully suggest, 

 evince a commendable liberality and enlarged views to offer a similar premium', 



to be called the 



RUFFIN PREMIUM. 



If Agriculturists would have their calling respected, let them lose no occasion 

 to stand up for themselves. We respectfully submit the same suggestion to the 

 American Institute, that being, in its very name, a national institution. 



Each might offer premiums, too, to be called after their successive Presidents. 

 It would seem to be but a fit compliment to those who must be presumed to 

 haverisen entirely by their usefulness and liberality, to the head of such institutions. 



There might also be the Van Rensselaer, and the Clinton, and the W'adsaorth 

 medals, for these were all great promoters of education and agricultural improve- 

 ments. As nothing is to be expected from Government to reward or honor great 

 promoters of industrial pursuits, let societies use every occasion to make their 

 names honorably familiar to posterity, if only to excite emulation. What was the 

 fate of Robert Morris, without whose financiering there could have been no 

 fighting ? — The man to whose linancial operations the Americans were said to 

 owe as much as to the negotiations of Franklin, or even the arms of Washington, 

 was allowed by his country to pass the latter years of his life in prison — con- 

 fined for debt ! 

 (920) 



