BU SELECTIONS PROM ADDRESSES. 



infixed in the minds of the American people, the possession of 

 new and rich soils, presents irresistible attractions. It is to no 

 purpose to attempt to dissuade them from their enterprise, by 

 an exhibition of its difficulties and privations. They find it 

 more easy to surmount them, than to call into existence the 

 skill and resources necessary to obtain such a livelihood and 

 position as they are ambitious to obtain here. When a person 

 is told that with the same effort he can arrive at as good a con- 

 dition in Connecticut and Massachusetts, as on the western 

 frontier, it does not satisfy him. He acts on the maxim of 

 Cassar, that it is better to be the first man in a village, than the 

 second in Rome. He is willing to live in a log house where 

 his neighbor lives in a log house too. But to occupy such a 

 dwelling, where others dwell in framed and ceiled houses, of- 

 fends his notion of republican equality. We must be recon- 

 ciled to such a state of things. The feeling, though it may be 

 extravagant and misdirected, is the legitimate offspring of our 

 institutions. It is a feeling which tends to elevation and re- 

 spectability of character, it prompts to self-denying eff'orts, it is 

 a preservative from degrading vice, and one of the great safe- 

 guards of that sense of dignity and the virtuous self-control, 

 which belong to the foundations of American liberty. 



4. Another circumstance which has retarded the advance of 

 agriculture has been a want of chemical knowledge. It is 

 only about a hundred years since the foundation of the science 

 of modern chemistry was laid by Dr. Black, of Edinburgh. 

 Previous to that time this branch of natural philosophy was 

 in no condition to render any service to the tillage of the 

 ground. And indeed it was not till a considerable period sub- 

 sequent, that application was made of its newly discovered 

 principles to that art in which it is destined to effect so won- 

 derful a revolution. Within fifty years the science has assumed 

 an exactness, and made a progress, and taken a prominence, 

 to which nothing in its previous history bears any comparison, 

 and upon which are founded the highest expectations of its 

 future development, and the immense benefit which it will 

 confer upon mankind. Probably no important interest of hu- 

 manity will receive greater advantage from this department of 



