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good intellectual opportunities may have its quick and most de- 

 cisive proof in the fact, that these farmers are intelligent men. 

 The thing is, and it has therefore been brought to pass. Our 

 agricultural population is intelligent, fully up to the standard of 

 the general average, and as I think above it. There may be 

 with them less of showy knowledge, but there is not less of 

 that which is substantial. 



Clearness of perception, a steady and firm judgment, a stout, 

 solid, compacted, sensible understanding, these high mental 

 qualities abound among them. It is well known with our 

 preacher'fe that a country congregation can be brought to follow 

 a close and deep argument quite as well as a city audience. 

 And I suspect a lawyer, if he were allowed to choose for 

 himself a jury that he meant to blind and confuse and twist, 

 (if a lawyer ever did mean to do such a thing,) would not go 

 first of all to put into the box twelve farmers. The business 

 may be known then, like a tree, by its fruits. 



It may be said, however, that there are at least certain occu- 

 pations that are, of their own quality, intellectual, and that 

 agriculture must always appear at some disadvantage compared 

 with these. The matter at this point is of importance enough 

 to be looked at a little ; since there are impressions of this 

 sort in the minds of many persons, especially young people, 

 operating unduly to the disparagement of agriculture, and 

 having influence with some in the choice of their occupation 

 for life. 



It is granted that there are such distinctively intellectual 

 pursuits. But not all are of this class that are sometimes 

 thought to be. We must object, therefore, in the first place, to 

 the spreading of that name over wide fields of employment, or 

 idleness, to which it does not belong. Then the distinctively 

 intellectual callings are few in comparison and limited in 

 capacity. It is well that they should be entered by those that 

 have special fitness for them ; but they will not hold great 

 numljers of men. Further, those that are in them, while they 

 get more of mental exercise and growth in particular direc- 

 tions, are not by any means always made to be stronger men 



