174 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



apply all the principles of science and experience to improve the 

 cultivation of the soil. Why, for instance, should not the al- 

 most entire surface of New England exhibit as high a state of 

 cultivation as we now witness around most of our villages'? 

 The soil is capable of it ; nay, of much higher cultivation, — ■ 

 capable of sustaining four times its present population; and 

 thus, if our morals and religion be preserved, of giving us four 

 times more influence upon the world. I trust that the next 

 generation will see this statement verified ; and that, too, as the 

 fruit of two things of which some are very much afraid, viz. : 

 rail-roads and book farming. Much occasion will the farmers, 

 as well as others, in this valley have, in my opinion, to rejoice 

 when the first steam whistle shall sound as it soon will along 

 the sides of Holyoke and Tom. We may not all indeed be 

 benefited as much as we expect and wish, and this and that 

 individual or village may receive no benefit, but the interests of 

 the community as a whole will ultimately be greatly promoted, 

 and no class be more surely benefited than the farmers. W r e 

 ought, therefore, to have public spirit and benevolence enough to 

 rejoice in the completion of this enterprise, even though as indi- 

 viduals, or in limited districts, we receive little advantage. It is 

 an illiberal spirit, and certainly not a Christian spirit, which can 

 see no benefit in any public improvement, unless brought about 

 precisely in the way we would have it. 



Protracted as my remarks have been, I cannot feel justified in 

 closing without adverting to the relations of agriculture to cer- 

 tain objects of far higher importance than any yet mentioned. 

 I refer to the mutual bearings between agriculture and personal 

 and domestic happiness, morality and religion. 



The influence of moral and agricultural pursuits upon per- 

 sonal and domestic happiness, has, from the earliest civilized 

 times, been a fruitful theme for the poet's numbers and the phi- 

 losopher's lucubrations. In the morning of life, indeed, while 

 yet time and experience have not stripped the world of its rain- 

 bow hues, men fancy that happiness dwells in more public and 

 exciting pursuits. One seeks it on the battle field and in the 

 wreaths that crown the warrior's brow. But he finds at last 

 that a sea of blood is not a sea of happiness. Another aspires 



