204 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



cuity and neatness of language, which have given him, as a 

 mere writer, no mean rank in the Hterary world. But his gen- 

 eral observations on agriculture are few, not sufficient in amount 

 to entitle him to the name, in any usual sense of the words, of 

 an agricultural author. 



The remarks of Jefferson on agricultural subjects are, I need 

 not say, expressed with the clearness and elegance of every thing 

 which proceeded from his pen ; but they are scattered in differ- 

 ent parts of his correspondence, and incapable of being embodied 

 in any regular essay. There is evidence everywhere of a pre- 

 ference for the country and for rural life, which seems to have 

 been in no degree quenched by the large share he took in every 

 important branch of political aiid literary inquiry. Though he 

 can scarcely be called an agricultural writer, he is entitled to 

 high distinction, as a friend to agriculture, from the improve- 

 ments which he made in the construction of the plough. This 

 most important of all instruments has been used in the old world 

 for thousands of years, and yet there are good reasons for be- 

 lieving, that it has been more essentially improved, within the 

 last half century, than in all past time. Look at the plough 

 used by old Roger Sherivia.Nj side by side with the improved 

 ploughs which you are now driving, (and this some of us have 

 actually done, a very little time since,) and you might suppose 

 that scores of centuries had rolled away in the interval. Now 

 the person who first, at least in this country, gave to this sub- 

 ject its due share of attention, was Jefferson. More than fifty 

 years ago, he was intensely occupied in contriving a mould- 

 board of the least resistance, an object, of which the consequence 

 is self-evident to every farmer. I have the authority of a French 

 standard work of the highest reputation, for saying, that Jeffer- 

 son was the first who ever gave any formula, by which the 

 proper curve could be given to this important part of the plough, 

 and thus established a fixed rule for what before was a matter 

 of mere imitation, I had almost said mere accident ! 



The two friends of agriculture, whom I shall now mention, 

 were highly honored citizens of our own State, men who wrote 

 much and well on agricultural subjects, and who manifested 

 their knowledge and their interest in them, by able and valua- 

 ble addresses, delivered within the limits of this county. 



