FUTURE AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 61 



with local markets for all the products of his field, and orchard, 

 and garden and dairy. And when that time shall arrive, my 

 friends, you will find that the highest Northern civilization will 

 have penetrated this whole land ; that the light of New England 

 schools will have been shed into its darkest places ; that through 

 the trials of war conflicting social institutions will have been 

 harmonized ; that the labor of this country will have been 

 brought to the standard of free institutions ; that the way will 

 have been opened for the individual exercise of the best and 

 highest human faculties, and that that American agriculture 

 which has heretofore flourished in spite of sectional rivalries 

 and jealousies will receive new strength from the energies of 

 one people united in the common object of enriching and culti- 

 vating and civilizing this whole land, as a home for themselves 

 and their children, and a refuge for the oppressed of all nations. 



We of New England have a right to contemplate this opening 

 prospect of American agriculture with peculiar gratification. 

 We live in a section of the country where the most careful 

 cultivation is especially necessary and important. The whole- 

 sale farming of the West and South does not apply to our hard 

 climate and narrow valleys. There is no section in which the 

 highest skill is so necessary, and none in which the farmer is 

 so much stimulated to exercise all his best faculties. We have 

 already done much, and we may do still more. And when we 

 look around us and see that the minds of our people are directed 

 once more to the land, we may anticipate a new era in which 

 intelligence and capital will be devoted to the work of restoring 

 the rural homes of our ancestors. In travelling through the 

 New England States I am always struck with the increasing 

 air of tlirift manifested in the farm-houses and fields of our 

 people ; and I am always gratified by the drafts which the 

 merchant and manufacturer are ready to make upon their 

 incomes for the improvement of their farms. In what points, 

 then, may we progress ? 



In horticulture and pomology we have laid the foundations 

 well for great advancements. When we have learned what 

 lands we can profitably devote to the growing of fruit, we shall 

 find that the quality of that crop grown in New England cannot 

 be surpassed in the United States ; and I heard with pride, not 

 long since, a statement from one of our most intelligent pomol- 



