16 MR. king's address. 



farmer, who went out hesitating and unbelieving, will come 

 home with a settled conviction that Mr. Phinney is a farmer of 

 great skill and enterprise, enlightened by a sound judgment : 

 he will cheerfully admit that his method of cultivation is a great 

 improvement, and he will apply it to his own farm as far as his 

 circumstances will allow. 1 should not have dwelt so long on 

 this subject, if, from my own observation and the experience of 

 others, I had not been fully satisfied that the adoption of a sim- 

 ilar method of husbandry would be beneficial to our own fields. 

 Let the farmers of Essex try the experiment ; the expense will 

 be but trifling ; the advantages may be great ; and if, by chance, 

 they should fail of success, they will have the satisfaction of 

 having at least attempted an improvement. 



The business of the farmer requires his constant care and in- 

 spection ; he must not intrust it to another ; if he expects his 

 work to be well done, he must do it himself, or at least see it 

 done. How many farmers have been misled by the notion 

 that their respectability and consequence in society is commen- 

 surate with the number of their acres, forgetting that it is the 

 condition, and not the size of their farms, which gives them 

 a character. This desire to be considered the owner of a wide 

 domain has been a fatal snare to many who might have enjoyed 

 their homestead in peace and plenty — it has involved them in 

 pecuniary embarrassments, which have driven them sorrowing 

 from the very fields, perhaps, which their ancestors reclaimed 

 from the wilderness, to seek for themselves and their little ones 

 a habitation amongst strangers, or in some distant, solitary wild, 

 where the voice of a stranger would be welcomed as the voice 

 of a friend. When it is matter of choice, the best sized farm 

 is that which the owner has skill, capital and energy to man- 

 age to the best advantage. A mistake similar to this, and of the 

 same disastrous consequences, has led some farmers into ex- 

 travagance in the size of their houses, extravagance in furnish- 

 ing them, and extravagance in their style of living. How many 

 kind hearted, pains taking, industrious farmers, forgetting that 

 " it is the eyes of others, and not our own, which ruin us," have 

 been lured by the false glitter to rivet on the chains which have 



