'212 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



JAN. 10. J8 !f. 



0:7= We li;ive been favored willi a fopy of tlie 

 Address of Gov. Hill of Nesv Ilainpsliire to the 

 Merrimack Co. Agricultural Society. Wo have 

 read it with a view to sjiviug some extracts from 

 it to onr readers ; hut the uhole of it is iu truth 

 so excellent that we can hardly do better than to 

 present the whole. The style of it is siiu|ilc and 

 perspicuous and the sentiments just, practical, and 

 useful. We promise our readers both profit and 

 pleasure in the perusal. 



GOV. HILL'S ADDRESS 



To tlie Mcrrimac Co. .Is^r. Society, October 1837. 

 What shall relieve the country from the de- 

 spondtncy and gloom which enshroud its present 

 pecuniary prospects ? What shall restore its 

 wonted prosperity ? What shall again give con- 

 fidence lictwuen man and man, and enable every 

 one to discharge his obligations to his neighbor? 

 What shall regulate exchanges between distant 

 points of the nation, and between this country and 

 foreign nations? It is pRooucTfON alone tliai 

 must furnish that wealth which shall give comfort 

 and ease. The world of late seems to have run 

 wild in ils notion of the actpiisition of riches; the 

 heads of a large portion of mankind have been 

 turned from the objects of real thrift and jnosper- 

 ity to fancied riches which were to grow out of 

 the rise of property and the adroitness of bargain- 

 ing and traffic. Experience, which is often titries 

 a severe school master, can alone coiTect the worst 

 errors of the world ; and the pre.senil ibitter expe- 

 rience will have the good effect that in proportion 

 to the intensity of the suffering will be the benefit 

 which the lesson shall afford. 



" We are iu the midst of a revolution ;" and in 

 that revolution although many industiions and 

 careful aiiil wary individuals may be sacrificed 

 with the imprudent and indiscreet, it will be but 

 an earnest of a better state of things hereafter, — 

 That better state of things must result, not from 

 the efforts of speculators to retrieve their fortunes 

 by new schemes of circumventing and d(!ceiving 

 their neighbors as to the value of property — not 

 from any artificial stinnihis which shall lessen the 

 value of the circulating medium at the same time 

 it raises the prices of particular articles of use or 

 necessity — not fi'om combinations to keep up pri- 

 ces by buying up and hohling on and making 

 scarce any vendible articles of necessity — not from 

 plans of usurers and usurious institutions first to 

 tnake money |)lonty that the whole conmmniiy 

 may be stimulated to buy what they do jiot want, 

 and afterwards to make it scarce that they m»y 

 take advantage of llui very necessity which tliem-' 

 selves have created to wrest from the hand of in- 

 dustry the bread which it has earned ; it is from 

 none of these sources, that we can or ought to 

 look for the great boon vvhiili all so mud; desire. 

 We are taught by the lessons of the past, and 

 especially by the condition of all that surrounds 

 us, that the productive industry of the country is 

 the oidy salvation of the country, in fiict we 

 may bring the matter at once down to this point, 

 that if the cultivation of our own soil shall he neg. 

 lected, the foundatiim stone is taken away, and oui 

 national prosperity must come to an end, 



Is there a farmer who by industry and labor 

 from early youth hath gathered to himself what 

 he ought to have considered competence and in- 

 <lependence ? That man |)erliaps commenced 

 life with little or no property : by a progression 



slow and sure he has brought up and educated a 

 bright and promising family, and all the while 

 continue.-! to thrive. Willi properly eimugh to 

 make himself happy in old age, and that property 

 in itseif growing more valuable — with too little 

 inileed, to give each of his children an estate to 

 begin the world with, but having already given 

 them their best estate, the art of earning for them- 

 selves a living — he sees others about him who 

 have made their thousands by the speculations ot 

 a month, a week, or even a day. Accumidations 

 of so great an amoimt, made in so short a time 

 with so slight an efl'ort, make hisown gains, which 

 have almost imperce))tibly aciMimidated from year 

 to year, and wl i<-h have come only through severe 

 labor and exertion, appear trivial and small inileed. 

 The whole amount is less than a getiteel specula- 

 tor would comfortably spend in a single year. — 

 The man is discontented and dissatisfied with 

 what has constituted his greatest enjoyment, the 

 life of labor that he has pursued — it is a bard ca.se 

 for him, that with doing ^o ntnch he has gained 

 so little. .M'hroughout his whole life, it had been 

 his great care not to run in debt ; no man could 

 at any time present an obligation of his which he 

 had it not in his power to discharge. He sees 

 others who are reported to accumulate ten times, 

 an hundred times as much as he is worth, by mak- 

 ing purchases, givijig their notes for payment, and 

 afterwards effecting sales at a great advance ; and 

 he at once concludes hisown coyness about going 

 into debt was but old fashioned folly which it was 

 now time he shoidd correct by imitating the new 

 fashioned wisdom of those supposed to he much 

 more shrewd than himself. He hesitates not to 

 endirace the first offer of specidation that presents 



he bargains for tiie purchase of timber lands, 



which, having in the course of a few months risen 

 itf value ten for one, must continue to rise till ev- 

 ery standing tree should count its dollar; he gives 

 his obligations for a greater amount than he is 

 worth, payable in six; months, one, two or more 

 year.s, raising on credit, money from the bank and 

 making for the first payment so large a sum as 

 would at any other time have seized him with 

 tremor to have passed through his ntiod as a real- 

 it/. For the moment, the delusion is complete — 

 the purchaser, even though the title to his land is 

 not ti) he secured until his list note is paid, fim- 

 cies that his fortune is mad ■, by the side of which 

 small indeed appears the whole accumulation of 

 his former life. Hut even before the day for the 

 second payment cotnes round, the prospect chan- 

 ges. He may have bonded his land, or be iriay 

 have sold it at a great advance, and taken others' 

 notes for payment. The bond has run out, and 

 perhaps discovered that this was part and parcel 

 of the fraud which had been practised upon him, 

 or the purchaser's notes to him turn out to I e 

 worthless. The rielusion not only vanishes, but 

 the deluded man finds tliat the hard earnings of 

 his whole life have l)6en swept from him by the 

 very act which was to satisfy his all-gras|iing ava- 

 rice. 



It would seem that one single lesson such as 

 this ought to be sufficient for a whole community. 

 Hut within the observation of many of us, there 

 are hundreds who, while feasting in the anticipa- 

 tion of untold accumnlatitms of wealth, have been 

 stripped, some of every thing they possessed and 

 involved beside beyond the hope of redemption, 

 and others of much property that they couhl sjjarc 

 not without great inconvenience. 



Such are the scenes tliat have been passing 

 around us within the last two years. For a por- 

 tion of that time, honest labor and the product! 

 of honest labor were almo.st hooted out of wha 

 would he considered respectable society. Indent, 

 it has been but too apparent for years (last that th(' 

 fashion of this country has tended to the educatioi 

 of young men and women to live rather by thei 

 wits than by their productive li:bor. 



Man is so constituted by his Maker, that noi 

 only is constant exertion necessary tor his subsia 

 tence, but his greatest hap|)iness consists in beiil)! 

 steadily engaged in some useful employment.-!. 

 Doomed to live by the sweat of bis brow, there il 

 no life more sweet than that of the laboring mant 

 and no man ought to he better satisfied with him- 

 self than he who contributes by the l-nbor of hi 

 own hands to the supiiort and comfort of bii 

 kind. 



To the inhabitants of our own New Englan' 

 the necessity for labor is our greatest blessinj 

 Here, as in other regions of the earth, the groun 

 does not bring forth sponloneously, food for ma 

 and beast; the severity of the climate and th 

 hardness of our soil render necessary habitui 

 constant labor for the purpose of procuring a livi 

 lihood ; and it is this constiint labor and the ente 

 prise attending labor, which have elevated tl 

 character of our people and placed them in tl 

 scale of intelligence and moral power very fi 

 above the natives of softer and more luxuriant cl 

 mates. 



Was it not that itian is the creature of chnng 

 ctmstant in desiring something that he has m 

 yet gained, we might suppose the farmers of Ne 

 England could not be induced to alter their pes 

 tions. Certain it is, that of all occupations i 

 callings in the community, theirs is the most ii 

 denendent and the most enviable. The farim 



-I 



who is out of debt, who depends upon Ins ow 

 production, who raises enough for his own coi 

 sumption, besides a sufficiency to dispose of ft 

 the means to purchase the necessaries of lif 

 knows little of the anxieties and the tortures i 

 the merchant, the mechanic, or the mauufacturi 

 managing a large capital, which is often at tl 

 mercy of the winds and wares and the fluctuatiol 

 of the times. Every thing that pertains to hi 

 inanity is uncertain ; but that Beini who lit 

 promised that seed time and harvest shall nevi 

 fail, gives us assurance that he who induslrious! 

 tills the soil is more sure of success than he wl 

 engages in any other bimisin enterprise. Tl 

 best directed efforts in commerce and trade, npc 

 the ocean and land, in extended mechaniial ar 

 maimfiicturing operations, and in the learned pn 

 f -ssions, are often unsuccessful. Very rarely dw 

 it liappen, that the farmer, who is blessed wil 

 heullh, who exercises sound discretion and Juil| 

 ment, who is both able and willing to lahoi nil 

 his own bands, and who puts his hand lo tl 

 plough wilhoul looking back ; rarely does it liti| 

 pen that such a man, whatever may he his nielil 

 acquirements and bis knowledge of incn a^ 

 thiiiff.-, does not thrive in his eslate. 



ing.-, lines not tin ivc m ins esiate. , 



How few of the learned professions, of mfl 



lants or mechanics, with no other means thj 



eir own hands, especially in the larger toWJ 



and villages, succeed iii procuring a livelihdt! 



much less in accumulating estates? Of the fir 



farmer-setilers of New Hampshire, six out ' 



ten began the world with nothing — they ran iolj 



debt for the very forest which their own ham 



