AGRICULTURE OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 23 



the knowledge gained by experience ; while health 

 and labour, sound minds in sound bodies, foUow in 

 its train, and constitute the durable substratum on 

 which the towering columns of liberty and the 

 world's hope are reared. There is little danger 

 that an employment furnishing the human race 

 with food and clothing, wliich is the great source of 

 competence and of wealth, should be spoken of too 

 highly or too intently pursued ; there is little room 

 for fear that its operations will be too extended, or 

 that too much light will be furnished by the labours 

 of the scientific or experimental. On the contrary, 

 the present state of things among us proves incon- 

 testably that the fault in this country is the other 

 way ; that with the hardiest and most enterprising 

 population on the globe, and a soil unequalled in 

 fertility, we have been so idle, or such improvident 

 cultivators as to be compelled to depend on other 

 nations for bread. Politics, and trade, and the mys- 

 teries of banking, and the haste to be rich, and spec 

 ulations in stocks and western lands, have employed 

 thousands, we might say millions, who would have 

 been more honourably, and, it seems likely to turn 

 out, more profitably employed in following the 

 plough, or wielding the hoe or the axe. 



The question has been not unfrequently asked, 

 How far are farmers in the United Stales justified in 

 folloiving the example and practices of British Agricul- 

 turists ? This question assumes an importance it 

 would not otherwise possess, were it not a fact that 

 we look with great interest to the results of agricul- 

 ture in that country; that most of our standard ag- 

 ricultural works are from that side of the Atlantic ; 

 that the wealth and resources of England are such 

 as to render that island a great theatre of experi- 

 ments ; and that the arts and the sciences which 

 can be' brought to bear on the cultivation of the soil, 

 are far more extensively diffused and better under- 

 stood there than here. Having the same Anglo- 



