ADDRESS. 277 



greatness, (and it is seldom any thing more than imagina- 

 ry,) they are anxious to inflict the evil upon their posterity, 

 — to rear their sons to the law, the rail-road to office, to 

 political power, and turmoil ; to make them merchants, a 

 useful, but greatly ov^er-stocked business, or to place them 

 in some other genteel employment, which shall exempt 

 them from the toils of labor, the salt that best preserves 

 from moral corruption. 



Mistaken men ! What class in society have within 

 their reach so many of the elements of human enjoyments 

 — so many facilities for dispensing benefits to others, 

 one of the first duties and richest pleasures of life — as the 

 independent tillers of the soil ? " The farmer," says 

 Franklin, " has no need of popular favor ; the success 

 of his crops depends only on the blessing of God upon 

 his honest industry." If discreetly conducted on the im- 

 proved principles of husbandry. Agriculture offers the cer- 

 tain means of acquiring wealth, and as rapidly as is con- 

 sistent with the pure enjoyments of life, or with the good 

 order and prosperous condition of society. Agriculture 

 is the golden mean, secure alike from the temptations of 

 mushroom opulence, and the craven sycophancy and de- 

 pendance of poverty. " Give me neither poverty nor 

 riches," was the prayer of the wise man of Scripture, 

 "lest," he added, " I be full and deny thee, and say, who 

 is the Lord ? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the 

 name of my God in vain." 



When we consider that Agriculture is the great business 

 of the nation — of mankind ; that its successful prosecu- 

 tion depends upon a knowledge in the cultivators of the 

 soil, of the principles of natural science, — and that our 

 Agriculture stands in special need of this auxiliary aid, — 

 we cannot withhold our surprise and regret, that we have 

 not long since established professional schools, in which 

 our youth, or such of them as are designed to manage this 

 branch of national labor, might be taught, simultaneously, 

 the principles and practice of their future business of life, 

 and on which, more than any other branch of business, 

 the fortunes of our country, moral, political, and national, 

 essentially depend. We require an initiatory study of 

 24 XIII. 



