276 ADDRESS. 



of manure, as their appearance indicated ; and yet I was 

 shown masses of well-prepared compost, in reserve, con- 

 sisting of yard manure, peat ashes, peat earth, sea-weed, 

 and fish — estimated at twenty-five hundred loads — all 

 produced upon his own farm. 



The third obstacle to Agricultural improvement, which 

 I propose to notice, is the subordinate rank to w^hich this 

 employment has been consigned, and to which the farmers 

 themselves have contributed, by a want of respect for 

 themselves and respect for their vocation. The whole- 

 some habits of society have been so broken up, by the 

 civil and political convulsions of the age, and the inordi- 

 nate thirst for acquiring wealth and fashionable conse- 

 quence, through mercantile and other speculations, that 

 honest productive labor has been thrown entirely into the 

 back-ground, and considered not only ungenteel, but me- 

 nial and servile. Yet I venture to lay down this proposition, 

 that he who provides for the wants and comforts of him- 

 self and family, and renders some service to society at 

 large, by his mental and physical industry, performs one 

 of the high duties of life ; and will ultimately be rewarded 

 in the conscious rectitude of his life, by a greater measure 

 of substantial happiness, than he who makes millions by 

 fraud and speculation, to be squandered in extravagance 

 or wasted in folly, by his children or grandchildren. The 

 revolutions which are constantly taking place in families, 

 sufficiently admonish us, that it is not the wealth we leave 

 to our children, but the industrious and moral habits in 

 which we educate them, that secures to them w^orldly 

 prosperity, and the treasure of an approving conscience. 



The farmers, I have remarked, share in the errors of 

 the day. Not content with the gains which are ever the 

 reward of prudent industry, and which might be greatly 

 increased by the culture of the mind ; nor content with 

 one of the most independent conditions in society, hun- 

 dreds and thousands of them seek other and new employ- 

 ments, and some of truly menial character, to get rid of 

 labor, the greatest blessing to man, and to raise themselves 

 in the imaginary scale of fashionable society. And if 

 they cannot participate, themselves, in this imaginary 



