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to whom the care and culture of the American soil is to 

 be committed. The earth beneath us has been too long 

 regarded and treated as something incapable of being 

 injured by any thing short of a natural convulsion, or a 

 providential cataclysm. We have been so long accus- 

 tomed to dig it, and ditch it, and drain it, and hoe it, and 

 rake it, and harrow it, and trample it under our feet, and 

 plough long funrows in its back ; and have so long found it 

 repaying such treatment by larger and larger measures of 

 endurance, generosity, and beneficence, — that we have been 

 ready to regard it as absolutely insensible to injury. Be- 

 cause our chains and stakes have exhibited from year to year 

 the same superficial measurements, we have flattered our- 

 selves that our farms were undergoing no detriment or dimi- 

 nution. We have remembered the maxim of the law, " He 

 who owns the soil owns it to the sky," and have been care- 

 ful to let nothing interfere with our air or daylight ; but we 

 have omitted to look below the surface, and to discover and 

 provide against the robbery which has been annually per- 

 petrated, by day and by night, upon its most valuable 

 ingredients and elements. 



The discovery has at last been made, the danger has 

 been revealed, the alarm has been sounded ; and if Govern- 

 ment can provide bounties for the destruction of the wolves 

 and bears and foxes, which threaten our flocks, our herds, 

 and our hen-roosts, I see not how it can withhold some sea- 

 sonable provision against the far more frequent and more 

 disastrous depredations by which our soil is despoiled of its 

 treasures, through the want of science and skill on the part 

 of those who till it. These depredations are none the less 

 treacherous, or the less formidable, I need not say, for being 

 carried on in no malicious spirit, and by no hostile hands. 

 The worst robberies, of every sort, moral or pecuniary, 

 of character, of property, or of opportunity, are those which 

 a man commits upon himself. It is due to ourselves, it is 



