&l)c JTarmct's ittcmtijln bisitor. 



131 



rural avocations, and in ilie conversation of Ma- 

 ecenas, the great patron of husbandry and learn- 

 ed men ; of the patriarchs of Jewish history, the 

 most ol whom were herdsmen and followers of 

 husbandry, Job with his large stock of cattle, 

 and Absalom, David's darling son, making a 

 feast for his sheep-shearers ; — of Home too as a 

 commonwealth, when it most flourished with 

 , brave and virtuous men, when it was no rare 

 thing for ploughmen to lead forth their armies, 

 as Atilius, who was tilling bis ground with a 

 yoke of oxen and sowing it himself) when the 

 Senate sent for him to he their general, return- 

 ing victoriously when he had accomplished bis 

 object, with the same hands that held the plough 

 holding the reins of a triumphant car; — of the 

 noble Cincinnatus, on whom was conferred the 

 dictatorship as be was ploughing his four acres 

 near the Vatican bare-headed and covered with 

 sweat and dust — a small pittance, one would 

 think, for a Roman general or emperor, but pro- 

 perty enough then to he deemed consistent with 

 the greatness of virtue ; of Terentius Varro, 

 who wrote and published the book De Ruslica, 

 relating to husbandry and good housewifery, in 

 which he tells uf his friend Tun-anus, a Roman 

 nobleman trudging on foot from market to mar- 

 ket to buy beasts, and boasts himself of his own 

 breed of mares and bis flock of seven hundred 

 sheep; — of the testimony in honor of the plough 

 exhibited in Romulus, the founder of the great 

 city and empire, who erected a college as among 

 his fundamental institutions, at the bead of 

 which were twelve priests, a fraternity of whom 

 be was installed as the twelfth brother by Lan- 

 rentia Acia, his foster mother, who platting a 

 garland of the ears of corn hound it on bis bead 

 with her while fillet as the sacred badge and 

 first crown among the Romans; — after citing to 

 the writings on Husbandry by kings, as Xeno- 

 pfaon eminent in this way, and Mago, the brother 

 of Hannibal, whose works in the hostile Cartha- 

 ginian vocabulary were so esteemed by the Ro- 

 mans as to be translated in divers languages, an 

 epitome whereof, made Greek, was sent to 

 Dejotatius as a jewel of inestimable value, and 

 looked upon by the Romans as so precious as 

 alone of the African monuments of learning to 

 be preserved upon the subversion of Carthage, 

 being translated likewise into the Roman lan- 

 guage by Cato — also the writings on Agriculture, 

 among Greek and Roman philosophers and po- 

 ets, as Aristotle and Pliny, Ilesiod and Virgil ; 

 and to the fact that every statesman and warrior 

 Roman of old had his villa where to bestow 

 himself in the time of vacancy from public busi- 

 ness, as they had down to his day in Italy and 

 elsewhere in the eastern world, " thinking them- 

 selves most happy when they take up with the 

 entertainments of their vineyards" — the gentle- 

 man English farmer pays the compliment to a 

 country life and the pursuit of Agriculture, 

 that— 



" This is that great vein by which the blood is 

 distributed through all parts of the body, or rather 

 the very blood itself, since it is diffused over the 

 whole, nor can any part or member subsist with- 

 out it. It is the foundation of traffic, and com- 

 merce, forasmuch as all the manufactures and 

 commodities which we export and receive from 

 foreign parts are but the productions of the 

 earth at the first or second hand. Corn, wine, 

 oil, fruits, cloth, linen or woolen [cotton, the 

 great American growth destined to grow to the 

 *:',.<■: ij clothing of the world especially in the 

 milder climates, in its economy and uses was 

 not then known as a material to be named] 

 silks, &c, are all of them the offspring of the 

 earth, cultivated by art and industry." 



As to the natural strength and ability contribu- 

 ted by the farmer, this English gentleman Nourse 

 of the sixteenth century affirms that 



"As the husbandman is most necessary to the 

 public in times ol' peace, so he is as useful in 

 times of war, since all the stores and magazines, 

 by which armies in the field are sustained, are 

 derived from bis labor ami providence. The 

 description, therefore, which the poet gave of 

 old Italy (be continues) that it was potens armis 

 atque libera gleba, powerful in arms and fruitful 

 in soil, was well concerted ; for Italy, as it was 

 one of the most fruitful, so it was the most mar- 

 tial and victorious country under heaven, giving 

 laws to all other nations; so that were it under 

 the command of one prince (it was then [A. D. 

 1700] divided into several principalities and 

 kingdoms, some of them hostile and autagonistical 

 to each other) it might possibly pretend once more 

 to be mistress of the world, as it was heretofore, 

 when the boundaries of empire were the ocean, 

 which it exceeded in greatness of extent. Nor 

 could it be possible for t landers (one hundred 

 and fifty years ago as it ever since has been 

 the garden of Europe, producing in an increas- 

 ing ratio the greatest amount of profit and pro- 

 duction from the smallest amount of land, find- 

 ing especially its richest alimentary manures in 

 the liquids of the cattle droppings and other 

 offals) with the other neighboring countries to 

 sustain such vast armies, and to have been the 

 seat of war and desolation for so many ages to- 

 gether, with such immense losses and calami- 

 ties, were they not enabled thereunto by the in- 

 vincible industry of its inhabitants and by the 

 fertility of its soil." 



Of the "interest of private persons" our 

 English writer avers it to be no less obvious 

 " that nothing can more advance it than Hus- 

 bandry." This is a great truth, the proof of 

 which is furnished in the early opening and set- 

 tlement of this country, especially that part of it 

 longest cultivated which we of New England 

 inhabit. The writer says— " The great estates 

 and fortunes (in England) which many men ar- 

 rive to in this way (are) a certain proof of this 

 truth. If some miscarry, it is no wonder, whe- 

 ther it be through their own ill course of life, 

 ignorance or negligence, or perhaps from some 

 sinister accidents, from which no state or condi- 

 tion can be exempted : but in the general it is 

 certain that, considering the vast numbers of 

 men who make profession of husbandry, none 

 make a surer fortune than those who follow it, 

 there being ten bankrupt tradesmen or mer- 

 chants for one husbandman, consideration being 

 had, I say, to the farms, which far exceed the 

 shops in number." 



The personal application of two gentlemen in 

 the legislature of north Grafton was the first in- 

 timation to me of the existence of your associa- 

 tion: so great was the pleasure of this move- 

 ment, at the distance of nearly a hundred miles 

 from my location, that nothing short of physical 

 inability from the distressing disorder which has 

 followed me up in the last five years, would pre- 

 vent the contributing of my mite towards awak- 

 ening the spirit which is destined, in the growth 

 and success of Husbandry, to cover our valleys, 

 our hills and even our high mountains with the 

 production and prosperity, which, creating inde- 

 pendence, make the heart of man and his blessed 

 counterpart woman, as the face of nature, to re- 

 joice. Who shall say of this land that our lot 

 has not been cast in pleasant places, and that we 

 have not a goodly heritage ! Who of us cannot 

 say with the inspired psalmist " The Lord is my 

 shepherd; therefore can 1 lack nothing. He shall 

 feed me in n green pasture, and lead me forth 

 beside the waters of comfort."—" Lord, who 

 shall dwell in thy tabernacle? or who shall rest 

 upon thy holy hill ? Even he that leadeth an 



uncorrupt life, and doetb the thing which is 

 right, and speakelh truth from bis heart: he that 

 hath used no deceit in his tongue, nor done evil 

 to his neighbor, and hath not slandered his 

 neighbor: he that settetb not by himself, but is 

 lowly in bis own eyes, and maketb much of 

 them that fear the Lord : he that swearetb to his 

 neighbor and disappointed) him not, though it 

 were to his own hindrance : he that hath not 

 given his money upon usury, nor taken reward 

 against the innocent. Whoso doeth these things 

 shall never fail I" 



To such a life does the calling of the farmer, 

 above all other occupations, lead: the man who 

 with his own hands annually increases its pro- 

 duction while he secures (he fruits of a single 

 acre may make himself most happy in the re- 

 flection of doing most good. How much more 

 valuable the gains coming from the labor in 

 earth's bosom than those of speculation and 

 trade which really produce little or no part of 

 the property made, and which depend often in 

 their greater amount upon the oppression or de- 

 ception practised in their attainment? 



Perhaps there has been no time since the first 

 opening of this interesting land, which may em- 

 phatically be called the land of refuge for the 

 oppressed from under the hand of despotic. Eu- 

 ropean rule, when the pursuit of agriculture 

 presented so strong inducements to the sons and 

 daughters of New England as at this time. I 

 thank my Maker that I have lived long enough 

 to be satisfied of the fact, that the very rough- 

 ness of nature, the abrupt hills, the flinty hard- 

 ness, the rocks great and little seeming to be all 

 in the way as usurping much of the surface, the 

 apparent inequality of the soil, sometimes too 

 rocky and hard in its natural state to catch the 

 seed, and sometimes so sandy as to burn up the 

 glowing vegetation in the face of a hot sun — 

 again so flat in a tenacious clay as to drown out 

 in wet and to parch out in drought, and again so 

 loose in sand or gravel as to blow away and 

 scatter the surface as in the nakedness of the 

 African desert covering over every thing green 

 in the reach of the wind ; now the valleys low 

 shutting out the sun for hours shining on the 

 hills, and now the mountains so high as seeming 

 to reach the moon and stars over our heads; — 

 the lakes and ponds laying below with the sharp 

 acclivities sometimes coming down, and again 

 the extensive swamps and morasses low enough 

 to be saturated with the standing water surround- 

 ing them; the rivers and streams with their sor 's 

 in the highlands now tumbling in solitary 

 ness through fissures of rock down the steepe. 

 crag, and now pursuing their way over some 

 level which has been gradually forming from the 

 elements borne down as the waters have worn 

 them off in the still deepening channels — now 

 reduced to liny littleness from the want of snow, 

 ice or rain to feed them from above, and now 

 swelling to the torrent which overflows and 

 overwhelms and tears away everything standing 

 in the way of the flood bursting from the clouds 

 overhead; — I rejoice to live with the satisfaction 

 that all this want of symmetry, this apparent iiii- 

 suitableness of one thing to another, peculiar to 

 New England and especially peculiar to this 

 part of our own Granite State, is rather to be 

 desired than dreaded, and offers greater induce- 

 ments to tarry upon the soil, to " nourish, cher- 

 ish anil feed it," than the smooth prairie levels 

 requiring little labor in the clearing, and inter- 

 rupting with no formidable obstructions in the 

 ready cultivation which has invited away from 



