MR, hazen's address. 9 



flattering hopes, that lead men into other paths, liave ended in 

 disappointment, they will seek safety, and even repose in the 

 lahors of agiiculture. 



But if these have a tendency to limit success, to leave the 

 mind unoccupied and unexercised, to prevent the attainment of 

 any elevation of character, then certainly the period and state 

 of things, which would turn men back to them, should be met 

 with regret instead of exultation. The causes of such effects, 

 if such there be, must be sought in the circumstances of cultiva- 

 tion, such were not the purposes of nature. Ws cannot over- 

 look that adaptation of all created things to the ends for which 

 they were designed, so complete that we cheerfully rely upon it 

 as conclusive proof of the greatest of all truths, the existence of 

 an Infinite Creator. He created the plants of the earth, and 

 man with all his faculties, and " made them crescive in their 

 quality." He ordained the plants and the minds of men to grow 

 by man's cultivation. The culture of the understanding and of 

 the fruits of the earth, are equally duties, though perhaps not in 

 equal degree ; and the proper performance of the one cannot be 

 presumed inconsistent with the due discharge of the other. It 

 cannot be supposed that man has been created with an inevitable 

 necessity of engaging in labors not compatible with the growth 

 and exercise of the higher attributes of his nature. If he has 

 been designed for such employments, they are fitted to man as 

 lie is — a being possessed of reason and affections intended to 

 be strengthened and purified, elevated and enlightened, through 

 a progress of illimitable perfection. Agriculture cannot be in- 

 tended to check, but rather to facilitate this progress. Rightly 

 practised, it must tend to accomplish in man the purposes of his 

 creation. It is true that as governments have been commonly 

 framed and administered for the benefit of the few, and against 

 the rights of the many, the agricultural classes, owing to a variety 

 of causes, have usually been those from whose oppression the 

 means of supporting this order of things have been drawn. In 

 their scattered dwellings, in ignorance, and with no means of ac- 

 quiring knowledge, in constant view of an entire equality of 

 wretchedness among all who labor ; wi(h no extensive inter- 



