14 MR. Oliver's address. 



imparting valuable hints and desirable information to each oth- 

 er. The well-read and considerate and thinking farmer may 

 give the most wholesome counsel to a statesman of acknowl- 

 edged sagacity, and the man whose brain is his workshop, and 

 whose only tool is his well-worn pen, may impart to him of 

 the working-hand, some elementary principle of mechanical 

 philosophy, before unknown to the latter, and perhaps, by that 

 very instruction, enable him to simplify his means of opera- 

 tion, and thereby expedite the perfecting of his work. The 

 rule works both ways, and illustrates again the intimate rela- 

 tion of head and hand. 



I say then, that our farmers are not properly educated, and 

 this deficiency of education underlies and implies all other de- 

 ficiencies ; and of education, as the bringing-out of the man 

 unto all possible physical, intellectual and moral perfectness, 

 for that is education, may your tongues and mine never cease 

 to speak in terms of highest honor. I make this assertion of 

 farmers, because I find it to be strictly true. 1 find it to be 

 true by the use of my tongue and my ears in my conversations 

 with farmers, and by the use of my eyes when I traverse their 

 farms, and view their barns, and note the various appendages 

 and appliances which they employ in their business, I find it 

 furthermore to be true by their own confessions, both of act 

 and of speech. And this deficiency of his education is more 

 the farmer's fault, than the fault of the community, or of the 

 Ctate, at any rate, of the State in which you and I live. For 

 predominating in numbers and influence, as you do, and of 

 right, and for the general good, ought to do, and I pray that 

 you always may, — you can, and may have, all that the State 

 can create and supply, to obviate every deficiency to which I 

 refer. Ask it then, get it, and keep it. If you do not, then 

 blame, as I now blame, none but yourselves. The farming in- 

 terest is and ought to be, the great and powerful interest of 

 the whole American Republic, and of each separate State of 

 the confederacy. Its members hold in their hands an amount 

 of political power far outweighing that possessed by the farm- 

 ers of any other, perhaps of all other nations, under the light 

 of the sun. The real agricultural laborers of almost every na- 



