PRACTICABLE AND NECESSARY. 17 



the want^of better knowledge, and the lack of means of dis- 

 seminating it — that our agricultm^e ranks so low in the 

 public estimation — that every young aspirant for fame and 

 fortune, turns from this pure source of independence and 

 happiness with derision, and seeks for higher enjoyments 

 — for fame and fortune — in pursuits which, alas ! often 

 disappoint his hopes, and which add httle or nothing to 

 the promotion of the public good. 



Yet agriculture may be rendered as progressive in Im- 

 provement, as profitable and as honorable, as any of the 

 other arts of productive labor— and more independent than 

 any other employment, if the agriculturist will employ the 

 same means to enlighten his mind, and improve his prac- 

 tice, which the artisan and the manufacturer, and others 

 employ. He lacks neither the means nor the natural 

 capacity for improvement ; and there is no business sus- 

 ceptible of greater enlargement, in the elements of human 

 happiness, than the one he pursues. AVe possess a soil, 

 prolific in the riches and blessings of a wise and beneficent 

 Creator, who has spread around us all the elements of 

 happiness. He has given to us capacities for applying 

 these elements to our own good, and the good of others. 

 He has commanded us to exercise these capacities, in 

 the use of these means, — and He has promised to reward 

 — and He does bountifully reward — all who prove faith- 

 ful to his command. 



Let us here stop and Inquire, what our agriculture is, 

 and what it may and should be. Generally speaking, our 

 practice Is bad. Its tendency Is to exhaust the soil of its 

 natural fertility — to render the products of our farms less 

 and less annually — until they become too poor to support 

 our families, or pay us for our labor, — until hundreds and 

 thousands are obliged either to sell out, for a nominal 

 consideration, and to resort to new and unexhausted soils, 

 to retrieve their fortunes, or to sink their patrimonial es- 

 tates, and to sink themselves and their families to indigence 

 and want. To illustrate what we here state, In regard to 

 the defective condition of our husbandry, and to show the 

 causes which have operated to produce It, we beg to in- 

 troduce an extract, from a highly-distinguished statesman 

 2# 



