6 MR. HAZEN S ADDRESS. 



Tacts which show in a striking manner the extent to which this 

 supply has been aheady furnished. Two years since it was as- 

 certained that nearly three thousand barrels of flour were carried 

 to one of the largest agricultural towns in this county, for the 

 consumption of its inhabitants. An intelligent and extensive 

 trader in the interior of the Stale of Maine, and not in the vicin- 

 ity of any considerable lumber district, estimates that he sold 

 flour, the last season, to as large an amount as he received of 

 cash for his whole sales. Beef and pork packed in Ohio, have 

 been freighted through the Notch of the White Mountains to the 

 fertile intervales that lie towards the head of the Connecticut. 

 Within a few years a mercantile house in Boston purchased in a 

 single season, from the county of Worcester, nearly two million 

 pounds of pork, the growth and produce of that county ; and the 

 same house is now employed in obtaining the same article of 

 provision from the West, to sell for consumption in that very 

 county. The last year, a season by no means of uncommon 

 scarcity, commenced the importation of breadstufFs to this coun- 

 try from the old and populous nations of Europe. We are told 

 that arrangements have already been made for importing in the 

 present year fifty thousand bushels of wheat from the single port 

 of Liverpool, and we are promised that these importations will 

 be made upon such terms as to reduce materially the present 

 prices. It is no less remarkable, and no less illustrative of the 

 degree to which agriculture has fallen behind other pursuits, that 

 neither the increased demand, nor the high prices of produce, 

 have had much, if any, effect on the value of lands for culture, 

 and that farms were never or seldom of more difficult sale than 

 at present. 



Without doubt this state of things may be attributed to various 

 causes. It is proof however,' either that a smaller proportion of 

 the population is engaged in Agriculture than formerly, or that 

 Agriculture itself is less productive ; that in the progress of so- 

 ciety other pursuits have gone in advance of this, and that it can 

 no longer be depended upon for the supply of those wants to 

 which within a very few years it was more than adequate. 

 Adapted as is agriculture to the nature of our civil institutions. 



