HON. MR. FOOTE'S ADDRESS. 143 



The Profits of Agriculture. 



[Extract from an Address by the Honorable Asahel Foote, Jr., at the 

 last Fair of the Berkshire Agricultural Society.'] 



Agriculture is profitable, in that it furnishes to the farmer an 

 honorable occupation. 



*JL. ^L. JL. JA. Ji. 



*7T -TV* *7v *Jr *7v- 



It is a fact that cannot escape the diligent observer of men, 

 that occupation, throughout the wide circle of human employ- 

 ments, has an influence more or less direct and controlling, on 

 human character ; and that in the life of a farmer, especially, 

 there is a combination of circumstances which strongly tends to 

 form a character somewhat unique. Among these circum- 

 stances may be named that intimate connexion which his 

 occupation has with the great operations of nature ; the direct- 

 ness of his dependence for subsistence on the bounties of the 

 Creator ; his remoteness from condensed society, from artificial 

 life, and from the follies and vices attendant thereon ; his ex- 

 emption from the lures of ambition, the wiles of speculation, 

 and the subtleties of trade ; the simplicity and benevolence of 

 his intercourse with his fellow-men, and those attachments to 

 the soil which imperceptibly grow up into a love of country ; 

 all of which conspire to beget and nourish in him those moral 

 qualities which ever form " the very soul of honor." 



But agriculture has other claims to be entitled honorable. 

 It has ever been, and the history of our own country is a suffi- 

 cient voucher for the truth as it relates to recent times, the great 

 herald and agent of civilization. Where can that happy land 

 be pointed to on earth, adorned with all the charms, and sharing 

 all the benefits of refined life, that does not owe its elevation 

 mainly to the humanizing arts of the husbandman 1 What is 

 it but the cultivator's axe, that, in every age, has circumscribed 

 the range of the savage, and extended the limits of civilized 

 life 1 What is it but the cultivator's plough, that has changed 

 the gloomy wilderness into a smiling garden, and converted the 

 abodes of wild beasts into the dwelling-places of men ? Who 



