638 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



ferent parts of the Union and under different modes of culture, 

 and generally whatever details may be included in a complete 

 statistical account of American agriculture. 



Our commercial and navigating statistics are already pro- 

 vided for, as incidental to our revenue-system. We need 

 similar returns both of our agriculture and our manufactures ; 

 and I should not be sorry to have them committed to a com- 

 mon bureau. 



One of the brief sayings, which have given a name and a 

 perpetual fame to the Seven Wise Men of Ancient Greece, is 

 the simple precept, " Know thyself." And a celebrated Latin 

 poet has not been willing to regard it as a mere saying of 

 human origin, but has emphatically declared that it descended 

 from heaven. 



It was a saying addressed to individual man, and undoubted- 

 ly contemplated that self-examination, that searching of the 

 heart, which is a duty of higher than human authority, and 

 which is essential to all moral or spiritual improvement. But 

 it is a doctrine as applicable to the outer as to the inner man, 

 and as essential to the progress and improvement of nations as 

 of individuals. And this country, beyond all other countries, 

 needs to know itself, to understand its own condition, to watch 

 closely its own progress, to keep the run of it, as we may well 

 say, for it is always on the run, advancing and going ahead 

 with a rapidity never before witnessed, or dreamed of. More 

 especially should the industry of our country know itself, and 

 realize its own condition and circumstances. American labor, 

 in all its branches, should have a map, on which it may behold 

 its own aggregate position, and its own individual relations, 

 and by which it may be enabled to see what obstructions and 

 interferences are in the way of its prosperous progress ; to see 

 particularly where it obstructs itself, by pressing into depart- 

 ments already too crowded, and where it may obtain relief and 

 elbow-room in departments not yet occupied. American agri- 

 culture, above all, should be able to look itself fairly in th? face, 

 as in a mirror, through the medium of the most detailed and 

 exact periodical surveys, that it may discover seasonably any 

 symptoms of over-action or of under-action, if there be any; 

 and that it may run no risk of expending and wasting its 

 energies in unprofitable toils. 



