66 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



This is particularly the case in all measures to im- 

 prove agriculture. It is the province of wisdom to 

 look ahead ; to sow the useful seed, and wait the 

 coming harvest for the recompense. We must sow 

 in the spring, and cultivate well in the summer, if 

 we would gather an abundant harvest in autumn. 

 We may, too, almost lay it down as a maxim, that 



THE MENTAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF AN AGRICULTURAL 

 DIST1UCT IS IN THE RATIO OF ITS IMPROVEMENT IN HUS- 

 BANDRY. To borrow the spirit of a political saying, 

 as goes agriculture, so goes the state. There is cer- 

 tainly much truth in the remark, that where the 

 farming is slovenly and bad, ignorance, indolence, 

 and vice most generally abound ; and that, where 

 agricultural improvement is most advanced, the pop- 

 ulation are most industrious, most intelligent, and 

 most moral. Knowledge begets a love of knowl- 

 edge ; and when a man has acquired enough of it to 

 convince him of its utility in his business, he con- 

 siders it a part of his farming capital, and he is anx- 

 ious to increase his stock of it as the readiest means 

 of improving his condition in life, independent of the 

 mental pleasures which it imparts. But, not having 

 acquired the requisite degree to enable him to ap- 

 preciate its value, or to show him the defects of his 

 system of management, he plods on, with listless 

 indifference, in the ways of his fathers ; and as great 

 success nowadays seldom rewards such labours, 

 he too often becomes spiritless and dissatisfied, and 

 relaxes into indolence, of which vice is too frequent- 

 ly the concomitant. 



Under the existing state of things, how does it be- 

 come us to act 1 What are we to do * Shall we 

 fold our arms, leave agriculture to decline farther 

 or to shift for itself, and depend upon more propi- 

 tious seasons and other Providential interpositions 

 to supply our wants ? Shall we depend upon the 

 cotton, rice, and tobacco of the South, which consti- 

 tute our almost entire exports, to pay for the foreign 



