10 



mediate protection to American agriculture. And when it 

 is said, therefore, that our legislators can protect commerce, 

 can protect manufactures, can find time to look after all 

 the interests of the merchant, the mechanic, the artisan, 

 the navigator, and the fisherman, but can find no time to 

 look after the interests of the farmer, — let it not be forgot- 

 ten that such protection as may be afforded to commerce 

 and manufactures, through the aid of a revenue system, is, 

 from the nature of things, impracticable and impossible for 

 agriculture. Let it not be forgotten, that, as to the great 

 mass of human food which our soil supplies, we have a 

 natural and perpetual monopoly in our own markets for as 

 much as we can any way furnish mouths to consume or 

 money to pay for. The ability to consume, in a word, 

 pecuniary or physical, is the only limit to the demand for 

 agricultural produce among ourselves ; and this ability can 

 by no possibility be affected by any legislative measures 

 directed to the immediate promotion or protection of agri- 

 culture. 



And here let me suggest a distinction, which, though 

 often lost sight of, is, in this country at least, a real dis- 

 tinction, and not unworthy of serious attention : I mean 

 the distinction between the promotion of agriculture, and 

 the promotion of the immediate interests of those engaged 

 in it. The promotion of agriculture looks obviously to 

 an extended and an improved cultivation of the soil, to 

 the introduction of better processes and better implements 

 of agricultural labor, and to the consequent production of 

 larger crops and more luxuriant harvests. But would such 

 results be necessarily for the immediate benefit of the great 

 body of American farmers? Would their condition, as 

 individuals or as an aggregate class, be improved, — would 

 their crops be enhanced in price, or stand a chance of com- 

 manding a convenient sale at any price, if the number of 

 farmers were multiplied, if the breadth of land under culti- 



