SECRETARY'S REPORT. 195 



Good, compact farming is closely allied to beauty. It loves a 

 thifty orchard, tidy and secure barns, a cellar wherein to hide 

 and save manures, well-kept fences, a safe storage of tools, and 

 vigorous growth everywhere. It can hardly fail of adornment, 

 so careful is it to keep everything at its best estate ; every tree 

 fruitful, every animal growing, every field fertile, every building 

 sound and snug. The least taste with these essentials of order 

 must carry comfort into elegance, and add to the useful, the 

 graceful. 



Compact farming cultivates that perfection and completeness 

 of method, that attention to the less as well as the greater, that 

 entire use and husbandry of every resource, which is closely 

 allied to taste, and prepares the way for its exercise. The farmer 

 may have most beautiful and ample grounds without departing 

 from a stern estimate of the direct value and sober utility of all 

 that he does. 



I have now reached a point to me more interesting than any 

 other : the influence of good farming upon character. I trust we 

 shall not soon come to that condition of things in which the land- 

 holder, is the landlord. I speak for those who do the work of the 

 farm. They will increase in worth of character just in propor- 

 tion as they learn to concentrate their labor, and bring to every 

 operation the most patient and thorough thought. 



We cannot safely neglect the interests of field-hands. No 

 class has suifered more wrong in the past. The bitterest, most 

 obdurate forms of slavery have frequently fallen to their lot. 

 Engaged in rough, hard labor, which admits of coarse and care- 

 less execution, separated from each other and made incapable 

 of combination, removed from the observation of men and that 

 general intercourse which quickens and develops the mind, these 

 laborers have been, even to our own time and country, especially 

 unable to protect themselves, and secure the full advantage of 

 their toil. 



That compact, circumscribed farming, which furnishes the 

 largest number of freeholds, it is evident, afford* the best oppor- 

 tunity to all to aspire to ownership, and the strongest motives 

 to the development of an independent, self-reliant manhood. It 

 breaks down a distinction so liable to spring up between the 

 holder of land and the workmen on it, and maintains that truly 



