A Discourse on Agriculture. 



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by slavishly digging into its bowels, to enrich the few to the 

 privation and misery of the many. But to effectuate a change 

 so salutary and desirable, the people must possess a due share 

 in the government ; liberty must shed her benign influence on 

 the labours of the husbandman ; and her rulers must, and most 

 probably will, encourage and cultivate the arts of peace. 



Read the accounts of modern travellers ; and you find, that 

 many of the most fertile regions of the old world, in some 

 whereof the cultivation was even renowned, are now gloomy 

 wastes, either scantily peopled by semi-barbarians, or by an 

 oppressed and often starving multitude, groaning under the 

 griping hands of Despotism. Is it not, then, most bitterly 

 to be lamented, that so few among ourselves are impressed 

 with convictions of these momentous truths. Insomuch, that 

 they leave an art, so important to the interests of the whole, 

 to the individual exertions of its professors, without that en- 

 couragement, protection and instruction which all should af- 

 ford! If men of reading and historical knowedge should say, 

 " the facts are known to us and credited ;" I invitingly reply — 

 " shew me thy faith by thy works." Assist in making the subject 

 popular, bring it into fashion, and the work is half completed. 

 It is no mall consolation, that there are honourable and highly 

 meritorious exceptions. It should continue to be our ardent 

 wish, as it has been our humble endeavour, that these excep- 

 tions should multiply, until the improvement of our agricul- 

 ture shall become as extensive and imperishable, as the freedom 

 and happiness of our country, to the "esto perpctua" whereof, 

 nothing can so essentially contribute ; it being, most indubita- 

 bly, the base on which that freedom and happiness are found- 

 ed. One would imagine, then, that every Patriot, be his pro- 

 fession or employment what it may, would feel an interest be- 

 yond any other, in promoting the prosperity of this universal- 

 ly important art. If the liberty of our country be so connect- 

 ed with it, that, as all history and experience show, it is the 

 test of its stability ; furnishing in war the supplies indispen- 

 sable for defence, in peace the materials for subsistence, com- 

 fort and wealth, what further inducements can there be i And, 



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