ADDRESS. 279 



improvement of the mind, — to elevate and to purify it, — 

 to self-respect, to moral deportment. And it will tend 

 to deter from the formation of bad habits, which steal 

 upon the ignorant and the idle unawares, and which con- 

 sign thousands of young men to poverty and disgrace, if 

 not to premature graves. A knowledge of these princi- 

 ples, to a very useful extent, can be acquired with as 

 much facihty in the school, or upon the farm, as other 

 branches of learning. Why, then, shall they not be 

 taught ? Why shall we withhold from our Agricultural 

 population that knowledge which is so indispensable to 

 their profit, to their independence, and to their correct 

 bearing as freemen ? Why, while we boast of our supe- 

 rior privileges, keep in comparative ignorance of their 

 business, that class of our citizens who are truly the con- 

 servators of our freedom ? I know of but one objection, 

 — the want of teachers. A few years ago, civil engineers 

 were not to be found among us. The demand for them 

 created a supply. We have demonstrated that we have 

 the materials for civil engineers, and that we can work 

 them up. We have materials for teachers of Agricultural 

 science, which we can also work up. Demand will al- 

 ways insure a supply. 



The enumeration of the foregoing obstacles to Agricul- 

 tural improvement, sufficiently indicates the means which 

 will be efficient in removing them. The means consist, 

 so far as I now propose to notice them — 



1. In giving a professional education to the young far- 

 mer, which shall embrace the principles and the practice 

 of the business which he is designed to follow in life ; and, 



2. In diffusing, more extensively, among those who 

 have completed their juvenile studies, and are better fitted 

 to profit by the lessons of wisdom and experience, a 

 knowledge of the same principles, and of the best modes 

 of practice which these principles inculcate, and which 

 experience has proved to be sound. 



We have professional schools in almost every business 

 of life, except in the cultivation of the soil, one of the 

 most important and essential of them all, and one em- 

 bracing a larger scope of useful study in natural science, 



