THE GENESEE FARMEH. 



20V 



of Congress the expediency of establishing a nation- 

 n! university and also a military academy. The de- 

 sirableness of both these institutions has so constant- 

 ly increased with every new view I have taken of the 

 subject, that I cannot omit the opportunity of, once 

 for all, recalling your attention to them. 



"The assembly to which I address myself is too 

 enlightened not to be fully sensible how much a flour- 

 ishing state of the arts and sciences contributes to 

 national prosperity and reputation. True it is that 

 our country, much to its honor, contains many semi- 

 naries of learning, highly respectable and useful; but 

 the funds upon which they rest arc too narrow to 

 command the ablest professors in the difiereut de- 

 partments of liberal knowledge for the institution 

 contemplated, though they would be excellent auxil- 

 iaries. 



" Amongst the motives to such an institution, the 

 assimilation of the principles, opinions, and manners 

 of our countrymen, by the common education of a 

 portion of our youth from every quarter, well de- 

 serves attention. The more homogeneous our citi- 

 zens can be made in these particulars, the greater 

 will be our prospect of permanent union," &c. 



Washington's heart was at this time, when at the 

 loftiest point of his elevation, still looking back to 

 the unpretending pursuit from which he had risen to 

 the command of armies, confederaeies, and finally the 

 great model Republic, lie looked back to the soil, 

 and that honest industry which made it teem with 

 ble,^sings. He looked back to the productive masses 

 that make up the vStates and nation, and felt it to be 

 the duty of those placed \)j them in power to use 

 that power to facihtate and perfect that creative in- 

 dustry which is the foundation of the prosperity of 

 the whob country. A national board or school of 

 agriculture, with all the advantages which books and 

 science could bring; with all the assistance which 

 philosophical apparatus and experimental tests, ap- 

 plied directly to the soil, upon the largest scale, could 

 lend; with all the opportunities which the cultiva- 

 tion of a considerable domain could afford for the 

 introduction of that tuition and discipline necessary 

 to form a practical skill and thorouglily systematized 

 views, in the relation to the various modes of farm- 

 ing, was what he contemplated. 



A national school, with all these essential requi- 

 sites, was the great object which Washington had at 

 heart at the close of his life. 



It is fortunate at this time that Congress, in acting 

 on the beciuest of another far-seeing philanthropist 

 of a foreign land, has organized an institute as a na- 

 tional instrument of instruction which can, without 

 starting imy constitutional cavil, be employed in im- 

 parting agricultural knowledge, not only among our 

 own countrymen, but among men of all countries. — 

 The express injunction of Smithson's will, which Con- 

 gress, as a trustee, has undertaken to execute, is " to 

 diffuse knowledge among men." Can it be pretended 

 that agricultural knowledge is not that sort of know- 

 ledge which the benevolent friend of human progress 

 wished to disseminate? The design of the utilitarian 

 who sought, in transferring his wealth to a new coun- 

 try, where an energetic people were scattered over a 

 rich but rude domain, to dedicate it to the progress 

 of his race, in pursuits to which they were called by 



surrounding circumstances, and which were most 

 lilcely to promote their prosperity, would not exclude 

 from the knowledge he ))rovi(led for them that on 

 which their welfare most depended. Could he have 

 meant, in providing for the diffusion of knowledge 

 among men, to provide only for lecture-rooins for 

 savans, for instruments to repeat for them philosoph- 

 ical experiments which had been taught them in 

 schools, and vvhich would bring within the circle ben- 

 efitted some dozens of learned professors in a nation? 

 Or could the giver of the Smithson fund, intending 

 " to diffuse knowledge among men," consider his aim 

 accomplished by gathering up a great library for the 

 enjoyment of the literati who might seek in Wash- 

 ington food for their studious appetites? On the 

 contrary, the ver}- phrase of the will, which enjoins 

 " a diil'usion of knowledge among men," would seem 

 to exclude those who claim to be already learned in 

 all the abstract sciences, so that the bequest might be 

 made universally useful by dispensing knowledge 

 among the masses of men who have not the time or 

 the means to devote to abstract scholarship — among 

 that great body of men who make up the nation, and 

 to which the mind instantly recurs and contradistin- 

 guishes from the small class of learned professors and 

 philosoi^hical students. 



The knowledge that Smithson would diffuse among 

 men must be that which would be useful to the ma- 

 ny, not the few. He could not hope to diffuse among 

 men generally the science of Newton, of Sir Hum- 

 phrey Davy, of La Flace; in a word, the abstract 

 science of all the schools, ancient and modern. The 

 knowledge he v.ished to diffuse would be the grand 

 results of their labors, as " coming home to the bo- 

 soms and business of men." And what subject is it 

 more important to bring the lights of science to illus- 

 trate and improve than the great leading one of ag- 

 riculture, v,'hich is the substratum of every useful art 

 of all the prosperity of the country ? The farmers 

 of the United States have, then, a claim, the strong- 

 est claim, that the S.aiithson fund shall, at least in 

 part, be devoted to the purpose of increasing that 

 laiowledge which is of all others most useful to the 

 world. 



It has been suggested that a happy union mightbe 

 effected between that experimental system for the im- 

 provement of farming which the la-'t hours of Wash- 

 ington's life were busied in maturing, and ttie institu- 

 tion which has since been founded in the city of 

 AVashington under the bequest of the philanthropist, 

 Smithson, " to increase and diffuse knowledge among 

 men." The farmer of Mount Vernon concentrated 

 all his views to make the begimiing of the new cen- 

 tury (1800) an era from whence a progressive im- 

 provement should start on his own estate, that might 

 teach the lesson of restoring worn out lands, and give 

 the impulse to the indefinite increase of fertility be- 

 yond that of the original condition of our soils. 



This system, he learned from his European con-es- 

 pondence, was, with the aid of capital, the lights of 

 science and of practical skill, associated together by 

 boards of agriculture and farming schools, producing 

 such results in Europe. His plans were laid and 

 drawn out in elaborate written instructions to the 

 manager of his estate, and he was on his horse from 

 day to day, riding from farm to farm, to second by 



