26 



directly to the other. It is the over-production of our agri- 

 culture which causes so much of careless and destructive 

 cultivation. It is the superabundance of our aggregate 

 harvests which occasions the meagreness of so many of 

 our individual harvests. Who cares to make his farm 

 yield double its present crop, when there is so precarious a 

 market for what it yields already ? Who can style him 

 a benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where 

 only one grew before, when the result of such a process 

 must be to diminish the chances of remuneration to the 

 laborer, and when doubling the product is so likely to 

 divide an already inadequate price ? 



And now, my friends, I am not about to violate the 

 political neutrality of this occasion, by inquiring how this 

 diversified industry, which is so necessary to the prosperity 

 of the farmer, and to the promotion of agriculture, is to be 

 brought about ; whether by protective tariff's, or judicious 

 tariff's, or moderate specific duties, or reasonable discrimi- 

 nation, or by ad-valorems and free trade. This question, 

 though it never ought to have been permitted to enter into 

 party politics, has practically become so identified with 

 them, that it must be left to other occasions. But the 

 necessity of a greater distribution of labor to the prosperity 

 of all concerned in labor, and the especial need which the 

 American farmer feels, at this moment, of more persons 

 engaged in other pursuits, who may become purchasers 

 and consumers of his produce, and the danger that the 

 American soil will receive serious and permanent detriment 

 from the careless, hand-to-mouth, cultivation, which such 

 a state of things induces, — these are no party topics. 

 They are great truths, which all must admit, and which all 

 ought to lay to heart. 



There is a letter of Dr. Franklin's, written in London on 

 the 22d of April, 1771, to Humphry Marshall, a Pennsyl- 

 vania Farmer, which contains as much practical wisdom 



