position which it has l)een able to maintain has had more 

 immediately to do than anything else in the production and 

 preservation of the openness, the elastic freedom and the 

 equality of our American society. And reliance of the same 

 sort must be had upon it in all the future. 



Now we may not suppose that the ability of our farmers to 

 keep the place they have so far held, depends solely on their 

 resources in property. It rests, in part, on their own care and 

 vigilance and determination, and some of the public duties to 

 which they are thus called, we shall have occasion to notice. 

 But the matter of property is of great account. And any 

 considerable loss in this respect in the relative weight and 

 power of the farming population of the country, would be 

 productive of the most serious evils. If the tillers of the soil 

 among us were, as a class, to be reduced to that poverty in 

 which those of the same occupation are compelled to live in 

 India, or even in France, there would speedily follow, even if 

 these had not gone before, governmental and social changes, 

 bringing us somewhat into the likeness of those nations of the 

 old world. 



For these public reasons it is to be desired that our agricul- 

 tural population should ever be thrifty and prosperous. The 

 possession of money has also its immediate personal advan- 

 tages, proper to be valued and sought for. I hope, therefore, 

 you are all rich ! And, indeed, you are. 



I do not forget that the average farmer must both work and 

 calculate for his living. He earns his money, as a man ought 

 to do. I think, too, that at the present time the pay he gets in 

 money for his day's work is somewhat less than that of other 

 working men, who are no more than his equals in diligence 

 and skill. This, in fact, is well understood to be so, and the 

 reasons and remedies for it have been of late much discussed. 

 There has been a local cause in operation in the unequal terms 

 upon which the New England farmer has attempted to compete 

 in the growth of the great staples, with the new and more fertile 

 West. But this in our own neighborhood, at least, has been 

 in part removed by the turning of attention to those produc- 



