158 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



is, not whether a youth originated from this or that profession, 

 but whether he has the determination and ability to be a good 

 scholar. Young men in crowded communities, under the in- 

 fluence of the strong social excitements which exist there, 

 sometimes acquire a precociousness of manners and of intellect, 

 that gives promise of more fruit than is ever realized ; but when 

 the son of the farmer presents himself, we feel much more sure, 

 that, though the stone be just from the quarry, unhewn and 

 unpolished, it is undoubtedly genuine marble, and will repay 

 the labor devoted to it. Indeed, let the early history of dis- 

 tinguished men in our country, I mean our lawyers, our phy- 

 sicians, our clergymen, and our politicians, and the leaders of 

 our benevolent enterprizes, be traced out, and I am greatly mis- 

 taken if you do not find that a large majority have once followed 

 the plough. 



Of the reflex influence of education upon agriculture I might 

 say much. It is this indeed, almost exclusively, that dis- 

 tinguishes the farmer of New England from the serf of Russia ; 

 the one, about as low in the scale of humanity as is possible ; a 

 servile animal, with scarcely more of intellect than the ox or 

 the horse; the other, an intelligent freeman, with sagacity to 

 know what his rights are, and with the determination to main- 

 tain them ; far more independent than the European lord, who, 

 with all his wealth and his castles, is a slave to his menials. 

 The American farmer has enough property to supply all his 

 reasonable wants, but not so much as to make him miserable. 

 He knows how to take care of himself, and is not compelled, 

 therefore, as most of the wealthy are, to commit his happiness 

 into the hands of mercenary hirelings, or unpaid slaves. And 

 it is his education merely, that gives him such a proud preem- 

 inence over so vast a majority of his fellow men. This alone 

 teaches him what are his peculiar advantages, and how best to 

 improve them. 



I have spoken thus far of education in its more general ac- 

 ceptation ; as meaning the discipline of all the powers of man. 

 But between science and agriculture, there is a still more spe- 

 cifically intimate relation ; and on this point, as more particu- 

 larly appropriate to the present occasion, and falling in with my 



