22 MR. Oliver's address. 



land-holder. And I can imagine no feeling of higher satisfac- 

 tion, no cause of heartier gratitude to good laws, and a merci- 

 ful and bounteous God, than must spring up in the bosom of 

 the exile from oppressive and unequal laws, when he finds 

 himself to be the cultivator of acres called by right his own, 

 and in the possession of which the whole force of the laws of 

 the country, if need arose for it, would be brought to secure 

 him. 



Now, farmers of Essex, look about you, and all over the face 

 of this God-blessed New-England of ours, and contrast with 

 the picture I have drawn, the condition of yourselves and of 

 your brother farmers. Contrast, likewise, the amount of soci- 

 al and political power you and they are able to wield, — and 

 the consequent advantages which you may all acquire for your- 

 selves and your children, — advantages acquired, too, not only 

 with no loss to your neighbor, but, on the contrary, with abso- 

 lute gain to the whole community and to the whole country. 

 For it is susceptible of easy proof, that that which profits the 

 agricultural classes, profits all others. They are to the whole 

 body political, what in Esop's celebrated fable, the belly is to 

 the whole body corporeal. Stint and starve that, and the 

 limbs fail and flag, and pine away and die. Keep that in good 

 and wholesome food, and with good digestion and a clear con- 

 science, and your whole body shall be full of life. Profit the 

 farmer, the great distributor of strength, and you invigorate 

 and vivify the whole social and political body. 



The earliest acts of the first comers upon these shores, when 

 shelter had been secured against the fury of winter, and that 

 winter, all weary and sorrowful as it was, had passed away, 

 were acts of tillage, their first labors were agricultural, and 

 from that embryo bud of tillers, has sprung a numerous race of 

 tillers. " Would to God that the children may inherit from 

 such ancestry, the same unconquerable resolution, stronger 

 than bars of iron, which strengthened their hearts, — their pa- 

 tience, 'sovereign o'er transmuted ills ; ' and above all that 

 faith, that religious faith, which, with eyes fast fixed on heav- 

 en, tramples all things earthly beneath her triumphant feet." 

 — Daniel Webster. 



