POSITION OF THE PARMER. 85 



which our manufacturing and commercial towns render to the 

 rural population, in return for the drafts they make upon 

 its moral, physical and intellectual strength. I am dealing 

 only with their relative positions. And when I consider how 

 powerless all other interests would become before the wasting 

 effects of a famine, how instantly a broken and bankrupt 

 trading community turns to agriculture for the means of relief, 

 and sees a ray of hope gleaming upon the country from 

 bounteous harvests, I am more than ever confirmed in my 

 respect for the parent of all social and civil enterprise. Storms 

 may sweep our seas, fire may consume our mills, bankruptcy 

 may walk our streets, but so long as the floods and drought, 

 are stayed from our farms, so long as seed time and harvest 

 continue on the earth, society will rest upon a foundation 

 which no convulsions can destroy. 



It is indeed true that mankind in all ages have given this 

 position to agriculture. The oldest nations of the earth, whose 

 annals run back to the Mosaic account of the creation, have 

 not only supported a teeming population from the soil, but 

 they have preserved an isolated political integrity which nothing 

 can shake. It was Syria in the days of Abraham, and Egypt 

 in the days of the Ptolemies, that as agricultural countries 

 increased in wealth and population. It is agriculture which 

 has alone fed the Chinese nation for centuries, and has enabled 

 that peculiar people to preserve unmolested its manners and 

 customs against the constant and eager attempts of outside 

 barbarians. No wonder then that mankind has an instinctive 

 attachment to this occupation. The poet, from the days ot 

 Hesiod down to our own time, has sung his sweetest and most 

 joyous song, inspired by the daily associations which attend the 

 path of the farmer. Speak but of the voices of nature which 

 surround him, — of the dewy stillness of the morning, of the 

 first soft whispering of spring, of the echoing call of his cattle 

 among the hills, of the busy hum of harvest, of the mysterious 

 midnight wind, of the wild raging and still repose of winter, 

 of the beauties of field and forest, and all man's nature responds 

 with quick, instinctive impulse. The words that are uttered 

 tell of all that is most dear to him, of all that he has one day 

 enjoyed, or of all that he hopes to possess before he is called 

 from his place on earth. In this respect agriculture has no 



