MR. braman's address. 29 



necessity of field toil. But the vast tracts of cheap and fertile 

 lands in the west, have interfered as really with agricultural 

 progress, as though human sustenance were borne to our dwel- 

 lings on the wind, and fell upon the earth like manna from 

 heaven. The hard and sterile soil of New England was not 

 made to yield sustenance without much cultivation. Its agri- 

 culture demands close attention, and inventive resources, and 

 such is the mental activity existing here, that if the locomotive 

 inhabitant were necessitated to confine the energies of his 

 mind to the bounds of his native borders, it is not easy to imag- 

 ine the new face that might be impressed on the landscape. 

 Swift says that the inhabitants of Laputa invented a process 

 of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. It was certainly 

 a very important discovery for a cold climate. Upon 

 what authority this declaration was made, does not appear* 

 The statement is corroborated by no other writer. But what- 

 ever the inhabitants of Laputa could do, I am certain that the 

 natives of New England could equal them. And if sunbeams 

 could be drawn from any other source than the sun itself, the 

 yankee pedlars would set up an opposition to that luminary 

 and offer a manufactured article for sale in the winter. 



But the boundless fields of cheap lands present invariable 

 temptations to emigration. The stimulants to a more inven- 

 tive and vigorous agriculture are withdrawn. It is found easier 

 for a person who has a taste for the labors of the field, to go a 

 thousand miles and reap an almost spontaneous harvest from 

 soils that have been growing richer since creation, than to 

 turn the stone of the New England hills into bread. And 

 then as larger proportions of waste land have been brought 

 into culture, and the facilities of transportation have been 

 multiplied, and a greater quantity of surplus products has been 

 thrown into our markets to compete with those of domestic 

 culture, every year has laid a still heavier tax on the inge- 

 nuity and exertions of the agiculturists in the older regions to 

 extract an adequate return from mould of stubborn and un- 

 grateful qualities. This demand in other circumstances would 

 have operated favorably, it would have called forth correspon- 

 dent effort, it would have developed resources equal to the 



