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and popular, thus persuading some, at least, of our sons and 

 daughters to look with more favor upon a life on the farm, and 

 feel less impatience to go abroad to seek their fortune amid the 

 excitement and temptations of city or village life, I shall feel that 

 I have done good service in behalf of morality and religion. 



Farming urges its demands in behalf of Society and the Church. 

 In forming an estimate of the prominent elements which have 

 been most efficient in the production of New England char- 

 acter, the first rank must be assigned, no doubt, to the Christian 

 religion. No candid survey of our past history can fail to detect 

 this. Next to that, I have no hesitation in placing the agricultu- 

 ral pursuits, in which our fathers have been so generally engaged. 

 They have constituted an important part of the foundation, the 

 substratum on which that character has been built. I do not dis- 

 parage manufactures. They have become an important element 

 in our present civilization. They give a certain impetus to the 

 community, and afford a market for our surplus products, thus" 

 putting in circulation that money which is so important an agent 

 in lubricating the wheels of social life, besides affording employ- 

 ment for those who cannot be profitably engaged in other depart- 

 ments of industry and enterprise. For these and similar reasons 

 I would welcome a certain amount of manufacturing in a com- 

 munity. 



But I must confess that I look with anxiety and alarm upon 

 any indications, that we are to cease to be an agricultural people, 

 in our increased attention to manufacturinfr and the mechanic 

 arts. What must we expect, by way of illustration, I ask, when 

 this ceases to be an agricultural town ? When your fields are worn 

 out, and these farms, which you and your fathers have occupied 

 and cultivated, have passed into the hands of strangers and/o?-- 

 eigners, Avith no sympathy in all that constituted its glory and 

 made it what it was — when a generation that knows no Joseph, 

 shall dwell in the rural districts, for whom the Sabbath bell shall 

 peal its notes in vain, when the sanctuary, if there be one, shall 

 not, as once, send forth its worshippers along the diverging roads, 

 that lead from its sacred portals. Nor is it a question without its 

 deep significance ; — How long will the village retain the form of 

 worship, when the rest of the town shall cease to pay the meed 

 of even an outward respect for the Sabbath and the sanctuary ? 

 Our hopes, if any, for the future, cannot be sanguine, unless we 

 can see a return of that taste for the farm, which our fathers 

 possessed, and which, as a legacy, they transmitted to their 

 children. 



