NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



PUBLISHED BY GEO. C. BARRETT, NO. 82, NORTH MARKET STREET, (at thk Agricultural Warkhousk.)_T. G. FESSENDEN, EDITOR. 



VOL. XII. 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 27, 1833. 



NO. 20. 



ADDRESS, 



delivered at Bridgcwater, before the Plymouth County 

 Agricultural Society, at their Anniversary, by Rev. 

 Josei'h Richardson, Oct. 2, 1S33. Published by 

 order of the Society. 



Gentlemen and Friends of the Plymouth County 

 Agricultural Society : — In the smiles of Heaven, 

 ever propitious to us, we have collected to-day 

 some of the first fruits of our industry, our peace- 

 ful arts, and our prosperity. We come, not to 

 stain, in heathenish devotion, our altars with hlood, 

 but with grateful hearts, to adore anil praise the 

 God of the Harvest. We have met to exhibit to 

 each other, for mutual gratification and improve- 

 ment, how Heaven has conferred on us power 

 over the elements of nature, to employ them as 

 ministers to our support and joy, and to give to 

 industry an efficiency; though not to create worlds, 

 to render this we possess more beautiful and 

 pleasant. 



We have met to do honor to agricultural and 

 domestic industry ; to review our reasons for con- 

 tentment with our lot, and to devise what means 

 we can, to render the good old county of Plymouth, 

 the holy land of this western hemisphere, to our 

 sons and daughters a pleasant land, as long as the 

 sun and the moon shall endure. 



We boast not of a land the most luxuriant. It 

 has its rocks and sands, its sterile plains and mo- 

 rasses, like other sections of our country. But 

 wherever agricultural industry and skill have ap- 

 plied their power, there we see in favorable sea- 

 sous, fat pastures, luxuriant meadows, delicious 

 fruits and golden harvests. This, in general, lias 

 been one of our least favorable seasons. 



For some cause the population of our county 

 and of other neighboring counties, has advanced 

 very slowly. In years past, a flourishing com- 

 merce has allured multitudes away from the plough 

 and the workshop to endure even harder toils, 

 severer privations, and to gain a fortune in the 

 end, that the industrious farmer has no cause to 

 envy. Other multitudes, inheriting, as it were, 

 from their pilgrim ancestors, a sort of chivalrous 

 enthusiasm to wage war with the wilderness, have 

 emigrated east and west and north, whom equal 

 industry and economy would have rewarded as 

 well in their native county. Consequently exten- 

 sive tracts of finely situated land, of excellent 

 quality, may be seen in various parts of our coun- 

 ty, lying uncultivated and unproductive, waiting 

 only for agricultural enterprise with the plough, to 

 open it to the sun and rain of heaven, and to put 

 on it a beautiful verdure and luxuriance. One 

 half of the labor that must be applied to bring the 

 wilderness to a productive state, would insure a 

 harvest of equal value. 



I speak of a harvest of equal value. May not 

 this he a proper occasion to consider the question, 

 Whether agricultural industry may not be so pat- 

 ronized and encouraged by the aids of better culti- 

 vation, as to retain our population in their native 

 clime, with the prospect of as much happiness, as 

 other parts of this country could promise them ? 

 Is this society, whose anniversary we have assem- 

 bled to celebrate, pursuing unavailing measures to 

 promote the prosperity and happiness of their fel- 

 low-citizens? Would it be best to emigrate? Pos- 

 sibly this season of drought and small crops may 



have pressed this question upon some of our 

 farmers, giving them sleepless hours and discon- 

 tented hearts, and causing their partners to bathe 

 their couch in tears. Would it not be wise for 

 many more to take up their connexions and break 

 away with tender ties severed and bleeding, to find 

 a better country ? 



Within the borders of our Republic the sun 

 rises and sets on land as fertile and beautiful as 

 the earth bears. Travellers, and especially land 

 speculators draw its picture with every enchant- 

 ment. Let all that is true be admitted, and let 

 the question be fairly weighed. If there is a land 

 where freedom can be better enjoyed, luxuriant in 

 productions, with little labor, and possessing other 

 important advantages equal to ours, it might, per- 

 haps, be wise to subdue our local attachments, to 

 forget the sacred associations that make our homes 

 dear to us, and to move onward for a deep wil- 

 derness or a broad prairie. But, having lived a 

 little beyond the credulity of childhood, we pause 

 a little. We have found that all, that is published 

 and believed, is not reality. 



The traveller passing along with the inspiration 

 of his zeal to make a popular and profitable book, 

 tells us of his delight in seeing " the emigrant 

 rearing his log cabin, — of the beginnings of social 

 toil in the wide wilderness," — how beautiful are 

 the little spots upon which the emigrants deposite 

 their household gods; — of springs bursting forth 

 in the intervals between the high and low grounds ; 

 — of brilliant birds chanting their mellow notes 

 and welcoming the stranger to his joys ! No, to 

 bis toils, his hardships, his sufferings, unseen and 

 unpitied ! All may seem beautiful to one, who 

 ouly looks on to see " the patient, laborious father 

 fixing his family" amidst this cheering of the wil- 

 derness. Does the traveller stop there to fix his 

 own abode ? No, his own sagacity admonishes 

 him, that there are untold solemn realities to be 

 met. He tells us that " the first residence among 

 the trees affords the most agreeable picture to his 

 mind ; that there is an inexpressible charm in the 

 pastoral simplicity of those years, when you wit- 

 ness the first struggles of social toil with the bar- 

 ren luxuriance of iiature."* This spirit of ro- 

 mance carries the emigrant from one scene of 

 first struggles to another, gathering the barren lux- 

 uriance of nature, till death ends his toils, and his 

 children are left to inherit the fortune and felicity 

 of doing each for himself, as his father did. Toils, 

 truly, are there demanded, where the soil is buried 

 in deep forests of massy timber and roots, requir- 

 ing a large portion of life with all the energies of 

 a mind and a body formed to encounter the most 

 rigorous hardships. 



But there land is cheap. True, where are vast 

 forests, extensive prairies, broad rivers and mild 

 winters, land is cheap, and when subdued highly 

 productive. 



To an European, who desired information re- 

 specting the encouragement held out to emigrants 

 in this country, onef of the most intelligent, can- 

 did, and worthy citizens of our country gave an 

 excellent answer to the lure held out in the cheap- 

 ness of land. He tells his friend in Europe, that 

 " many of our citizens have migrated to the west, 



* Flint's Valley, p. 53. t Dr. Rush, p. 'Ju7. 



under the delusive expectation of purchasing lands 

 cheaper than in the old States. They arc, in fact, 

 often much dearer when you estimate their price 

 by the profit of the grain, which is cultivated 

 upon them. For instance, an acre of land in Ken- 

 tucky, which sells for a quarter of a guinea, and 

 yields thirty bushels of corn, at four pence sterling 

 per bushel, is dearer than land of the same quality 

 in Pennsylvania, at a guinea per acre, that yields 

 the same quantity of corn, which can be sold at 

 the nearest mill or store for two shillings sterling 

 per bushel." This case shows that though the 

 land costs in the old State four times as much as 

 in the new State, still it is the cheapest, because 

 its produce will command six times as much money 

 as in the new. 



The scarcity of money and the impossibility of 

 paying debts by raising produce, once and again 

 drive the emigrant from his cabin and hard earned 

 improvements into the wilderness. Heavy debt 

 any where is enough to try the virtue of a chris- 

 tian ; but in the new and sparsely settled parts of 

 the country it holds the debtor, as by the throat, 

 with inexorable severity. Even where they have 

 slaves to perform their labor, and the soil is luxu- 

 riant in its products, you will hear the cry of op- 

 pressiveness of debt and poverty. There their 

 corn will command only twelve and a half cents 

 per bushel, and other products of industry a simi- 

 lar price. There, indeed, a subsistence is easily ob- 

 tained ; but a mere subsistence is a poor reward for 

 industry. It permits not a spirit of enterprise to 

 move. The arts of civilized life can scarcely ad- 

 vance a step. Of the moral condition of a people 

 thai Mtua.ed, our public journals are often giving 

 us melancholy instances. There are some com- 

 paratively new parts of the country, where popula - 

 tion and enterprise have concentrated, where mar- 

 kets have been created, good institutions have been 

 founded, and the people have possessed them- 

 selves of the best means of improvement and hap- 

 piness. But there, as here, all is achieved by in- 

 dustry, enterprise, good conduct, and the smiles 

 of Heaven. 



We desire a soil more productive and milder 

 winters. But to gain these advantages would it 

 be wise to part with our free schools, with a quiet 

 and peaceable state of society, where life and pro- 

 perty are secure, and religious order is maintain- 

 ed ? In my judgment the most productive soil 

 and mildest winters would be but a poor compen- 

 sation for the loss of any of these blessings. With 

 their glowing descriptions of the new countries, 

 the best accredited travellers give us saddening 

 views of the population, as wanting industry and 

 enterprise, languishing, as if under the constant 

 influence of fever and ague, debased in morals to 

 a great extent. 



I would not do injustice to any portion of our 

 country. But we have a right to the true reasons 

 for being satisfied with our own. The farmer, in 

 forming a just estimate of his condition, will take 

 an account of his labor and its products, and com- 

 pare them with the privileges and blessings they 

 enable him to procure and enjoy. Does the farmer 

 complain that taxes are heavy, and the customs 

 and fashions expensive, so that he cannot grow 

 rich? Let him go back then, into a half civilized 



