xx A Discourse on Agriculture* 



This would, indeed, open a wide field. I have not sufficient 

 materials for the task. IN or have I been able, since the 

 request was made to arrange the few I possess, or to obtain a 

 Supply of numberless deficiencies. It is not, therefore, my 

 intention, because it is beyond my power, to undertake so ex- 

 tensive a topic. If, as was long ago recommended by the ve- 

 nerable father of our country, a national arrangement, either 

 attached to a national seminary, or, as in England a board of 

 agriculture, in France, a national institute, with a branch de- 

 voted to husbandry, and, as in all countries, regardful of this 

 all important subject, some national, or state plan had been 

 adopted and established, such materials would ere now have 

 been at hand. Geological, agricultural and statistical inqui- 

 ries would have been promoted and made, essential not only 

 to the agriculturist, but to those who hold our political helm. 

 They would be furnished with the means of forming correct 

 opinions of the resources of our country, various in its climate, 

 soil, products and local capacities. Errors in financial cal- 

 culations would be avoided, and the prosperity of the whole 

 advanced. Whatever good or bad practices existed, would be 

 promulgated to the cultivators of the soil ; so that they could 

 have been enabled to profit by the one, and sedulously to avoid 

 the other. Native manures and all auxiliaries to husbandry, 

 would have been discovered ; and their localities and uses 

 would have been known. And yet, with all the information 

 we could obtain, the result would be imperfect. It would en- 

 able one more intelligent than I profess to be, to give but a 

 rude outline of a truncated pyramid, built on a foundation, in 

 many portions of it, unsound, and, with some exceptions, rough 

 in its structure, with little ornament in its parts : and still re- 

 quiring immense supplies, both of knowledge, materials and 

 workmanship, before it can be completed. We could exhibit 

 the primaeval spectacle of man in his hunter state; and trace 

 his progress to a wonderful degree of civilization and improve- 

 ment. No quarter of the globe, can furnish such lessons for 

 enterprize, successful industry and countless wealth, taught 

 in our happy country, (if we always more intimately felt its 

 blessings) in the comparatively short period, in which we have 



