620 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



and practical farmer — most indomitable and skillful in the use of the flow — and if 

 W2 had the honor to represent a portion of Massachusetts — where more than half 

 a million of taxes are annually self-imposed for the education of every child ia 

 the State — we would especially insist that equal public honor should be voted, 

 above all men, to a certain Horace Mann* for his inestimable, yes, inestimable 

 labors, as Secretary of the Board, in the liable cause of education — that great, 

 most Christian and effective preventive of crime and of war — and if our reason 

 should be demanded, we would demand in return — pray, g%ntleraen legislators, 

 what is the end of any legislative action but to promote the public happiness? 

 And we would ask, Can any nation — we will not say Christian — but can any nation 

 that consults its true honor and glory and happiness, set a higher value, and bestow 

 larger rewards on skill in human destruction, than on those who stand head and 

 shoulders above their fellow men, in exainples of invincible perseverance and skill 

 in augmenting the products of the earth, and with them all the comforts and the 

 means of Christian refinement and civilization — or larger than on those, who ren- 

 der immortal service to their kind by diffusing the seeds of godlike knowledge, 

 and with them, virtue, and power, and peace — that best of all power, which 

 gives men power over themselves, and power to be useful to their fellows ? 



Perfectly well do we know that in the present depraved state, not so much 

 perhaps of the public sentiment, but of public men's false estimate of it, every 

 motion to keep the Plow always above the sword, and even in advance of the ship 

 and the loom, would be deemed Utopian and idle ; and meet with little counte- 

 nance from men, whose measure for patriotism is too often their measure for pop- 

 ularity. But we trust in God, for the sake of the plow, that better times are 

 coming. We only need the influence of the Press to hasten them — and this is, 

 unfortunately, at present allied to, and in too large a proportion supported by 

 other if not rival industries. What we have a right to hope is, that the agricul- 

 tural Press at least, will unite with, and go ahead of us in demanding less for 

 war, and more hereafter for agricultural education. Even yet more do we rely 

 on the growing influence of the schoolmaster ! In the moral progress of the 

 world, honors and patronage we are well aware are first bestowed on warriors. 

 That has been, in fact, the characteristic of barbarism, in all ages and in all parts 

 of the world. Next shoots ahead the trader or exchanger; manufacturers still 

 holding a lower grade, and the cultivators of the soil, whether women or men, 

 are considered mere serfs of the soil, attached to, and sometimes even yet in bar- 

 barous portions of Europe, sold along with it, like the trees that grow or the 

 cattle that browse on it. It is only in the highest state of civilization that 

 the producers, working and improving the great machine, rise in the public es- 

 teem and begin to learn their true consequence. From that time Agriculture and 

 civilization advance together. 



With such a man as Horace Mann (whom we have not jthe honor nor the 

 happiness of knowing personally) Secretary of the Board of Education in Mas- 

 sachusetts, in every State of the Union, we should have in process of time Nor- 

 mal institutes in them all. Every child in every State, between the age of eight 

 and sixteen, would be ten months at school ; 98 per cent, at least of coming gen- 

 erations would make useful and profitable, and worthy citizens ; and our poor 

 houses and jails and penitentiaries would be without inmates, and might be con- 

 verted into schools and colleges. The cost of supporting one regiment would 

 support a Normal school for training agricultural teachers in every State. 



* This was in type long before Mr. Mann was nominated for Cong^-ees. 

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