17 



hall twenty cultivators for one of, other callings, and their 

 proportion to the whole population will be fifty per cent, 

 greater than in any city you can visit. The man who has all 

 these things crowded and piled along his daily path gets in- 

 different to them ; but the yeoman's appetite is always sharp, 

 and more than that, it is rarely unnatural. 



After this outline of a proof that need not be further de- 

 tailed or extended, I will leave it for your oAvn judgment 

 whether the natural influences of agricultural pursuits are not 

 related to a high civilization in a way most favorable to the 

 latter. Nor will I advance the question, almost impertinent 

 here, whether such a civilization be not the most desirable of 

 all things for human beings, dwelling together in anything 

 called society. But a plain conclusion must follow. It may 

 not happen, as matter per consequence, that the thoughts and 

 habits of the yeomanry of the country will be fully up to the 

 natural and theoretical demands of their pursuit. And there- 

 fore am I here to-day ; not to deck your farms with rhetori- 

 cal rainbows, nor flatter you with high commendation ; but 

 to show you that you have a duty, and that the circumstances 

 of the age are making it more and more imperative. 



The common trite expressions as to the antithesis of town 

 and country, are not necessary to be here repeated. We are 

 all well aware that the correcting, revising, recuperating force 

 resides in the country, for the restraint of the hot and seeth- 

 ing evils that breed so fast and foully in the cities. Nothing 

 to-day holds the vicious multitudes of New York in check 

 but the salutary thought and strong hand of the country 

 behind it ; and were that country more like New England in 

 social character, there might be found resemblances between 

 the two capitals where now there are only contrasts. 



