REQUIREMENTS OF THE FARMER. 187 



mortal name in history, and made his mark in the British Par- 

 liament as one of the great lights of that kingdom. He knew 

 what it was to succeed on every field except his farm at Bea- 

 consfield ; and after he had exhausted his wisdom in literature, 

 in scientific investigation and in statesmanship, Edmund Burke 

 went to the farm to learn that to be a good farmer required, as 

 he said, more common-sense, observation, judgment and wisdom 

 than all the other work which he had endeavored to accomplish 

 in life. 



Will you tell me, now, that knowledge is unnecessary to the 

 farmer ? He should know all he possibly can know ; and the 

 first and best knowledge he can have is that which will protect 

 him against false theories and false assumptions of any kind. 



I am sure our boys can be well taught in this college. If 

 they apply their knowledge to the land, so much the better ; if 

 to other pursuits, even then their education will not have been 

 in vain. A knowledge of land-management is useful to all 

 men — to all who would be practically useful in their day and 

 generation — to all who would enjoy the refinements of rural 

 life. I would send a boy to the Agricultural College, even if 

 he was destined to a professional life. Our young men enter 

 upon their classical career often too early in life, before they 

 have acquired a taste or physical strength for. their work. No 

 man, who has not experienced it, can estimate the exhaustion 

 of an academic career, or understand fully the physical trials 

 of young men, who, striving for high position in a college, are 

 bleached out in those cloisters, where the ambitious boys trim 

 their midnight lamps. So I say I would give a boy practical 

 sense, good muscle and strength, if nothing more, at the Agri- 

 cultural College, if I intended afterwards to send him to a 

 classical college for the purpose of giving him a professional 

 education. 



Do not, then, despair ; and if some of these young men do 

 come out ministers, lawyers, engineers or surveyors, it will harm 

 no man and no State. But they will not all come out in that 

 way. There is an astonishing attraction about the soil. We 

 all have, or should have, our rural tastes ; and when a man has 

 once acquired a taste for the land, it never dies, until he passes 

 away from earth. A boy goes from this county into the city, 

 and begins at once to make his fortune, guided by tlie good 



