14 



portion of your time aad your talents to the cultivation of 

 her soil, in improving her husbandry, in dissipating the 

 mists of vulgar prejudices that time and superstition and 

 ignorance have hung around this art. No longer suffer 

 the mortification of seeing the most enterprizing of your 

 sons annually calling for the portion of goods that may 

 fall to their share, joining themselves to citizens of far 

 countries, and if not wasting their substance^ at least ap- 

 propriating the fruits of your toil in regions far from the 

 institutions and sepulchres of their fathers. 



Ye men of affluence I come and bestow a portion of 

 your wealth in improving the face of that earth, from 

 whence your treasures were derived. If managed with 

 the same discretion that marks the direction of your ordi- 

 nary concerns, you will not find it an unprofitable invest- 

 ment. It will be placing a part of your property where or- 

 dinary changes cannot corrupt it, and where the hands of 

 violence cannot plunder it. It is a mistaken idea that farm- 

 ing under any circumstances is an unprofitable pursuit. — 

 "Without discussing the subject, permit me to inquire, from 

 whence is derived the annual support of our population in 

 a style of expense (and for which we ought to blush) supe- 

 rior to that of any other people upon the globe ? Whence 

 the enormous sums that are annually expended in education 

 and charity ? Whence our roads, our bridges, our halls 

 of justice, our temples of worship, and that splendid galaxy 

 of edifices for public instruction that marks our land? — 

 All that founded them, and all that supports them, springs 

 from the soil. But, besides the pecuniary profit and the 

 security to yourselves and posterity, you will realize from 

 farming a thousand delightful anticipations and ten thou- 

 sand heartfelt recollections. You will awaken in the la- 

 bourer the spirit of industry, and encourage him with the 

 hope of independence. You will also have the satisfac- 

 tion of contributing that noblest of all charities, that does^ 

 Bot merely relieve poverty, but Yi\\\ch prevents it. 



