10 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



WHO IS THAT YOUNG MAN ASHAMED OF THE PLOW ? 



We sometimes hear of young men being too proud to be seen laboring in the 

 fields — indeed, we are not sure that we have not seen such. Now, nothing can 

 justify any man in eschewing manual labor on his farm, unless it be that he can 

 be otherwise more profitably employed in the superintendence and direction of 

 the labor of others, or that easy circumstances allow him to indulge his leisure 

 in the luxury of acquiring knowledge by converse with men of superior minds, 

 personally or from their writings. 



Do men of narrow minds who despise labor remember that in Rome, after the 

 expulsion of the Kings, seven acres were allowed to each citizen ? Curius Denta- 

 tus, Fabricius, Ptegulus and others distinguished as the most deserving among 

 the Romans, had no larger estates. Cincinnatus, according to some authorities, 

 had only four acres. On these limited spaces they dwelt and cultivated them 

 with their own hands. Until he tries it, no one knows on how little land all the 

 essential comforts of life may be produced. 



It was literally from the plow that Cincinnatus was summoned to be Dictator ; 

 and the Samnian Ambassadors, when they went to Curius Dentatus to sue for 

 peace, found him on his farm, cooking his repast of vegetables in an earthen 

 dish. To purchase easy terms they offered him vessels of gold, but the noble 

 Roman disdainfully refused their offers. " I prefer," said he, " my earthen pots to 

 your vases of gold. I have no desire for wealth, and am satisfied to live in pov- 

 erty and rule over the rich." Can any one, pray, tell us where any of the old 

 Dentatus stock can be found ? 



Farmers of the United States ! — you for whom alone we care and labor — if 

 you can find the least sprinkle of that old blood, seize on it as you would on a 

 scion of the choicest fruit about to become extinct, and try to breed back on it, 

 until we can get a stock of honest men for public functionaries of every sort, 

 whose study shall be to diffuse knowledge, to inculcate economy, and to promote 

 peace, and such distribution of the public moneys collected from the landed inter- 

 est, as shall enlighten and purify the mass of the cultivators of the soil until the 

 wisdom and forecast of the constituency shall be reflected by all our public ntien 

 and public bodies. If ever you can get, for instance, one of the old Washington 

 stock, one who will tolerate freedom of thought and of speech, and go exclu- 

 sively for the Constitution and the public good, persuade him to hold on until his 

 new and salutary system of management of the public farm shall be thoroughly 

 developed and well rooted — until an odious system called the " spoils system," 

 worse than the Canada thistle, shall be extirpated from the whole earth, and 

 the anxieties of all our young farmers shall be withdrawn from the tree of pat- 

 ronage and the fruit of office, which turneth to ashes in the mouth, and their 

 contemplations be turned on their own condition, business, and rights, and to the 

 means of their vindication and improvement. 



In this exhortation there is no narrow suggestion or spirit of farty. It is in- 

 tended and believed to have a direct bearing on the prosperity of practical Agri- 

 culture ; for, depend on it, as respects the ultimate welfare and safety of your 

 pursuit, they rest, as does public virtue, itself, upon knowledge ! How many 

 idle young men have we, standing where idleness ever does, on the brink of ruin, 

 and who could get ten times as much land as satisfied a Cincinnatus or Dentatus, 

 who are yet ashamed to labor, but not ashamed to enroll their names on the list 

 of the most abject of all slaves — slaves whose daily bread depends on the capri' 



clous breath of arbitrary poiver ! 

 (58) 



