28 



NEW ENGLAND PARMER. 



August T^. 18-%. 



EXTRACTS FrtOAI AN ADDREfJS, 

 Delivered before the Rhode Island Sucieij for the 

 Encouragement of Domestic Industry, hy IVilliain 

 ffunicr.^— Continued from page 31. 

 My simple object is, under existing- circumstan- 

 ces, antl which ! presume are probably pennaaeiit, 

 to induce men of education and property to be- 

 come farmers, and farmers under a'l circumstan- 

 ces, permanent or temporary, to become men of 

 education and knowledge, especially as regards 

 -their own all important profession and occupation. 

 My simple tliou^rht is, that men of knouleuge, 

 jihould by it make or increase capital. I have 

 ventured to assert that we Iiave arrived at the 

 proper point for an improved course of Agricult- 

 ure. I have admitted that to be an improved, it 

 ought to be a profitable course — but I do not 

 mean by that, profitable by the racking exertions 

 of a single year upon a single crop. This is too 

 much like our present folly and practice, except 

 that we now rack without capital — tliat is, witliout 

 adequate manure, labour, and skill. I moan profit- 

 able by the average crop upon a suitable plan of 

 rotation, of six, five, or four years, leaving the soil 

 ameliorated, and the average profit fur cither of 

 these years greater than it could be by an iaiitten- 

 tion to this process, or to the greater exhaustions 

 of a single year. The preparative year will be 

 expensive in its outlay, but even taken singly 

 more profitable in its result than a single year of 

 present mismanagement, This plan means the 

 use of a suitable capital at first, but with a certain- 

 ty not only of compound interest, but with an in- 

 creasing rate of interest each year. It means *hc 

 employment of capital on your best land. We 

 have scratched over too much. Reserve your 

 force for what will reward. Let land of the 

 second rate except in the vicinity of large and 

 increasing towns, continue in pasture. Supply 

 the third rate with plontations of timber trees. 

 You never need despair when the bleakest and 

 most barren regions of tke Highlands of Scotland, 

 vhere Dr. Johnson in his journey could not see a 

 tree, are returning thousands and tens of thous- 

 ands of profit in this mode. Never cultivate a 

 poor and ungrateful soil at a great expense, un- 

 less price will justify it. It is the natural tendency 

 of the advanced periods of society of a scarcity of 

 new unbroken soil, of thriving manufactures, of 

 an active Commerce, of a rapid circulation of 

 money, grounded on a solid capital, and directed 

 by principles of responsible credit, and above all 

 by a condensed population, pressing hard upon 

 subsistence, and aroused to over activity by 

 foreign war, to call the poorer poils into action 

 by stimulus of enormous price. Tliis is not our 

 case. It has been that of England. Let our 

 poorer soils not be the material of our first experi- 

 ments in our new Agriculture. I venture to aver, 

 that we have land as fit for the highest Agricul- 

 ture recommended, as any anywhere. The Delta 

 of Egypt, the vallies of the Duchy of Milan and 

 a few other spots, the favourites of nature and 

 climate excepted. The whole belt of the Narra- 

 ganset bay — the whole of Rhode Island proper — 

 the Islands of Prudence and Conannicut — the 

 whole township of Bristol — present as strong a 

 natural soil as any in the region. There is hardly 

 any tract of land in England of this extent, con- 

 containing so few acres unfit for tillage, or other 

 jroper proportionate husbandry. The foundation 

 of our new system must be for the most part the 

 .'sheep tearing system. It is the true source of 



h 



British ai;ricultural wealth. Sheep make perhaps 

 the most considerable part of the flesh food of 

 Britain, and wool is the material of that great 

 manufacture, with which, in spite of zealous com- 

 petition she mostly supplies the rest of the world. 

 The necessity and profit of raising sheep, induced 

 the English farmers to study early the best means ' 

 of success in this business, and led to llieir turnip , 

 and esculent root system, or the preparatory crop, ' 

 to their rotation crops, to their drill husbandry, in 

 short taken in its connexion and affinities, to their 

 agricultural advancement — I liked to have said 

 peri'ection. , 



There are single counties in England that clip 

 annually tiventy millions of pounds of wool. The 

 proJuce of tlio whole kingdom almost surpasses 

 belief. It exceeds a hundred millions of pounds 

 taken from forty millions of sheep. It is now the 

 period(our Merino mania having settled into sobrie- 

 ty, and our National Legislature having afforded a 

 fair degree of protection to the manufacture of 

 wool,) to attend to tliis-true source of Northern 

 thrift and prosperity. Recollect, that you do not 

 merely cultivate a field of cotton, herap, or flax, 

 that feeds only the loom, but you rear up an animal 

 that while living feeds the loom^ and by his loss of 

 life supplies tlie tannery and taWe, and who while 

 living restores to the earth all he takes from it. It 

 is a settled fact, and more easily explainable, that 

 the Merino bree.i improves in this country. It is 

 consolatory to be assured that the prohibitions of 

 England as to the importation of Sheep have been 

 evaded, and are as to us now nugatory. Some of 

 the best of the Bakewell breed, are already in the 

 country, yielding credit and profit :o their patriot- 

 ic importers in the State of New York Several 

 importations of the tine Saxon breed have been 

 recently sold at Boston ; and a new breed, a cross 

 of the Tecswater and Merino, which proves to be 

 inestimable, both as to carcass and wool, and per- 

 haps on the whole better fitted for our country 

 than any other, has rewarded the exertions of Mr 

 Featherstoncliaugh, of Duanesburgh, New York. 

 The name of this gentleman suggests to me the 

 remark that it is gratifying to find that character, 

 celebrity, a pure and solid fame, can be derived 

 from Agricultural pursuits, and the literature that 

 fits, adorns, and explains them. It is delightful to 

 discover that we can indulge in the emotions of 

 gratitude towards men v,-ho are not agitating 

 politicians ; and that another class is rising up in 

 the land, who are deserving of estimation, and 

 challenging notice, without the additional merit 

 of figuring as venal intriguers, demagogues, local 

 philanthropists, and the people's exclusive friends. 

 The papers of the gentlemen I have named, and 

 the addresses of Mr Van Rensselaer, in the two 

 volumes of the memoirs of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture of New York, (volumes combining as much 

 of useful and original matter, and judicious selec- 

 tion, as any two our country, or any other, ever 

 produced, on the subjects we are now discussing,) 

 are wortliy, speaking the language of condensed 

 encomium, of Arthur Young or Curwen ; and are 

 worth to a nation, a thousand times more than the 

 letters of Junius, or the satires of Churchill, ex- 

 quisite as they are. Embark, then proprietois. — 

 You who are gentlemen of estate and education. — 

 You whose views have been extended by literature 

 — by travels at home and abroad — embark in this 

 now and patriotic employment, which seems so 

 "profuse of good, so pregnant with delight." Ap- 

 ply capital and knowledge — p«sh forw«r-d 



competition for the proud distinction ot Lliuj 

 hailed as the best farmer in the land ; nay, the bes. - 

 patriot. For, according to the definition of a clas !(•''' 

 sical autlicrity, " he is the best who occasions fou' I* 

 blades of grass to grow where two grew before.' (* 

 And you practical farmers — men of good sense— #i' 

 of sound Yankee acuteness and faculty, look on — (ft* 

 observe the practice of these men wlio have reat ii* 

 the books, and seen the fields of foreign Agrii ie,« 

 culturists. — Observe them with a close, but un« ini 

 envying, unsneering scrutiny. If successful, re ^'^ 

 joice in their success, and imitate and improvi iiiii 

 their modes of cultivation. If unsuccessful, do no bk 

 sneer or reproach. You are saved from harm, ant. t-»t 

 have the benefit of the beacon without the exi »ri 

 pense ef building or lighting it. ifa 



But, say the practical farmers, we are at a loss' "' 

 we are overwhelmed by magnificent assertion,-an« '' 

 astounded by miraculous results, contradictory tf, "" 

 our experience, and transcending our speculai "' 

 tions. VVe are necessarily distrustful ; we are ig| •" 

 norant even of the language of this new science *' 

 When it is used by scholars, we find it abstrac '" 

 and technical — labouring at the precision oi ™ 

 chymistry. And when used by practical Englisl ^ 

 artd ;S' oti'li farmers, in the thousand memoirs anc " 

 reports they have been encouraged to present ta " 

 the public, we find it frequently provincial, bar- 'S 

 barous, and unintelligible. We are frightenecM *' 

 even at the facts which incontestible proofs com- '"' 

 pel us to believe. We hear, with a kind of dis- ' : 

 may, tliat a thousand bushels of lime have beei 

 used, and profitably used, upon a single acre o 

 land in Derbyshire. That more than a thousani 

 guineas have been given for the use of a singh 

 ram, of the Bakewell breed, for a single season. — 

 Tliat upwards of two thousand bushels of turnip.- 

 per acre, is a full, but hardly an extraordinary crojj- 

 Our farmers cannot deny these things ; but thej 

 believe them as most do the dark dogmas of a sterr 

 theology, or the subtle tlieories of enigmatical met- 

 aphysics. They pioduce no effect upon life or prac- 

 tice. It is not that con\iction and conversion : tha 

 " engrafting of the word that bringoth fortli th( 

 fruits of gonl living." It is tke more judicious meth- 

 od to indicate useful beginnings, based upon admit- 

 ted and comprehended principles, than to be alwayj 

 appealing to da-'.-.ding results, and to a pcrfectioE 

 unattainable by the mere ardency of hope, or ex- 

 travagance of single eftbrt. Our course, I repeat 

 it, must be gentle, gradual, progressive, persua- 

 sive. You would stupify a student of arithmetic, 

 or of elementary mathematics, if you were to di- 

 rect his attention at once to the Principia of NeWr 

 ton, or the profound demonstrations of La Place. 

 ) The pallet and the pencil would fall from the 

 ' hands of the young artist, to whom were pointed 

 out the glories of Michael Angclo, or Raphael, as 

 the models he was to imitate and surpass; he Wouli! 

 j be blinded by the excess of light ; he would deein 

 himself barred by impossibility. The intenseness 

 of his own unintelligent -admiration would chill the 

 gonial current of his soul, and transfix him, as by 

 Ian icebolt, tlie statue of in.Iolence and despair. 

 i In regard to Ihe scientific language of Agricul- 

 j ture, tlie diffi'-ulty is not great, or would not long 

 continue. It is true there is an over-tendency in di- 

 1 dactic writers of the present day, to generalizatiou 

 I and abstraction. Tlie learned seem ambitious to 

 , write only for the learned. But a mere technical 

 1 faculty of being understood by each other, is but 

 half the duty or merit of writers win aim at gen- 

 1 eral good, or aspire to general fame. But farme'rs 



i. 



