24 MASSACHUSETTS AGEICULTURE. 



AGRICULTUEE AT HOME A^D AT THE 



WEST. 



Fi'om an Address before the Hoosac Valley Agi'icultural Society. 



BY F. P. BROWN, OF NORTH ADAMS. 



I propose to consider first, what for lack of a better title, 

 I shall style the political aspects of farming, namely, its 

 reciprocal relations to and with the State ; second, its eco- 

 nomical aspects at home as compared with the West; third, 

 to deduce from our premises a line of such practical consider- 

 ations and suggestions as we may be able, for the encour- 

 agement of agriculture at home. And first, the political 

 aspects of farming at home. What has the State done for 

 agriculture? What has agriculture done, what is it still 

 doins: for the State ? I answer that, aside from the land-ten- 

 ure, the free titles to our farms, which after all is no small 

 thing, as I propose to show before I sit down, the State has 

 done little or nothing for agriculture ; while agriculture has 

 done much for the State. Why, some of our public men have 

 accepted it as a foregone conclusion, that agriculture in New 

 England was inevitably on the decline — a thing to be left out 

 in the cold. We hear much about the glory of manufactures 

 in Massachusetts, and we all believe in manufactures; of 

 " her commerce cleaving every wave," — and who would strike 

 a spar or furl a sail from the magnificent fleets in our har- 

 bors? — of "her institutions of learning various as human 

 knowledge, her institutions of benevolence various as human 

 sufibriug" ; of "the voices of her poets, orators and scholars" ; 

 of her history which "the world knows by heart," — in all 

 these we, too, rejoice. But what statesman in the senate 

 chamber, or poet in glowing verse, has yet celebrated the 

 praises or chanted the triumphs of agriculture in Massachu- 

 setts ? 



