MR. gray's address. 21 



study, a profession, and diffusing its principles abroad, 

 those and other means of fertihty will necessarily be de- 

 veloped and applied. The labors of the farmer will be 

 more bountifully rewarded, and a motive furnished for 

 the investment of capital in farming operations. 



The broad foundation of progress and success being 

 laid in the intelligence and skill of the farming com- 

 munity, we shall hear no more complaint of our hard 

 fortune in being placed on granite and barren rocks. 

 We shall have no occasion to envy the western farmer 

 with his rich bottom lands and ague fits ; no desire to 

 leave the hills, the vales, and crystal streams of our own 

 happy New England, which are associated in our earliest 

 and most sacred recollections ; no wish to be divorced 

 from the friends we love, the institutions in which we 

 have been educated, the altars of God where we have 

 often worshipped, to leave, in fine, our glorious heritage, 

 than which the sun doth not shine upon a better or fairer, 

 for the uncultivated wilds of the west, shut out from so- 

 ciety, religion, and law. And yet, such must be the case, 

 unless efforts are made to increase the fertility of our soil. 

 We never can sustain our increasing population, and your 

 sons must go west from necessity. Let it be remembered 

 gentlemen, that Yankee character is exceedingly flexible ; 

 your sons will not be a race like their fathers, but will be 

 liable to become contaminated by the influences which 

 surround them. It is a subject which appeals to every 

 interest, social, moral, political, and religious. Let us 

 then make agriculture a science, a profession. Let us 

 establish institutions where our sons may be qualified to 

 become scientific farmers, thus furnishing a motive, by 

 increasing the rewards of industry, which shall fix them 

 to their native soil, that when they assume our responsi- 

 bilities, they may be better prepared to discharge their 

 duties as citizens and as freemen. 



" Then may our sons be as plants grown up in their 



Mr. Finney's letter, in the Geological Survey of R.hodc Island, p. 246. See 

 also Professor Hitclicock's Final Report on the Geology of Massachusetts, vol. 

 1, p. 10!), seq. 



