MR. BRAMAN'S ADDRESS. 5 



whose interests your association is devoted, I shall "direct my 

 remarks to those aspects of the subject which are of a more 

 o-eneral character. I propose to consider in the first place, some 

 of the obstacles which have retarded the progress of agricul- 

 ture in the world. 



I. The oppressed condition of many who have cultivated 

 the soil. 



Despotic governments have laid some of the heaviest 

 burdens, with which they have afflicted mankind, on the 

 tillers of the ground. By the enormous taxation which they 

 have wrung out of the hard earned fruits of their toil, the 

 feeling of insecurity which they have inspired with respect to 

 the enjoyment of their acquisitions, they have repressed enter- 

 prise, unnerved the sinews of industry, and discouraged at- 

 tempts at improvement. Agriculture is the oldest of all arts, 

 its existence is coeval with the race ; it commenced in the gar- 

 den of innocence, and has engaged the uninterrupted atten- 

 tion of mankind in the Eastern world for 6000 years. It has 

 drawn towards itself a larger portion of human toil, and em- 

 ployed a greater variety of talent and observation than any 

 other occupation of life. It had its origin in a part of the world 

 favorable to its cultivation, and from its first date, has been 

 diffused over regions that have enjoyed some of the most 

 fruitful soils and genial skies that are to be found upon the 

 globe. But it is in those very climates that arbitrary power 

 has exerted its most unmitigated and cruel sway, and laid its 

 iron hand upon the right arm of agricultural toil. Egypt is a- 

 mong the most ancient countries of the East. It possesses a 

 soil of amazing fertility, and a climate that admits of uninter- 

 rupted vegetation. The Hebrew scriptures give us a suffi- 

 ciently clear specimen of the dreadful severity of its govern- 

 ment, at one remote period of its history ; and when we con- 

 sider the information which Herodotus has furnished, that the 

 soldiers and the priests were the only classes which were hon- 

 orably distinguished, and those stupendous works ^f art, some 

 of which remain to this day, the wonder of mankind, and the 

 fabrication of which must have demanded the forced labor of 

 so many thousands of people for successive years, we can im- 



