AGRICULTURE AND CIVILIZATION. 9 



but the salutary thought and strong hand of the country 

 behind it ; and were that country more like New England in 

 social character, there might be found resemblances between 

 the two capitals where now there are only contrasts. 



I speak for another reason. The next great period will no 

 doubt witness large changes from the present social condition. 

 For twenty years past, at least, the country and its pursuits 

 have been constantly drawn upon, depleted, robbed of their 

 natural reproduction by the factitious attractions held out by 

 the denser communities, to induce the young to forsake the 

 plough and hay field, and join in the chase after wealth in an 

 hour, and eminence in six lessons without a master. To such 

 an extent has it gone that a smooth-faced boy, even, seeing 

 in his folly no quicker method, resorts to train-wrecking, 

 thinking in this bold w.ay to force a large and sudden income 

 without labor. But it seems as if the insane thirst that had 

 driven men away from the sure and peaceful path, and made 

 them cry, as did a distinguished politician of Maine, that he, 

 "within four years, would be either in hell or in Congress," 

 must soon experience a crisis. The land is, meanwhile, starv- 

 ing for labor ; the sod gets thick on the old cornhills, and the 

 fields that would give the tiller a safe and not too toilsome 

 living, run to bushes, because he has gone to the city for 

 more than a living and got considerably less than one. It is 

 against this unnatural distribution of things that your efforts, 

 O husbandmen of Essex ! may well be directed. You are 

 in part responsible for the leaning of this social tower, that 

 threatens more its fall than does that of Pisa. The jobbing 

 and managing crowds of State Street and Wall Street may 

 boast of refined manners and elegant homes ; I do not care : 

 theirs is not a high, a noble, a beneficent civilization. They 

 may display wealth and feed fat in luxury ; but so could the 

 courts of Pharamond and Charles II., and both were cursed 

 with a corruption to which our own erratics even now seem 

 tending. In your hands, I say again, is the medicine for such 

 frenzies, if you stand for the interests of agriculture, and if 

 you deserve the character I have drawn ; and the nation shall 

 hold you responsible if it is not applied. The elements of a 

 high civilization are nowhere more developed or more in the 

 hands of the agricultural class than in Essex : let us see you 

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