56 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March. 



timate connexion with good morals, and the support and purity 

 of our repubhcan institutions. 



Rural life in New England, where every man may be a free- 

 holder, tends to inspire and encourage an honest pride of char- 

 acter, and a self-respect, which is a strong security to virtue. 

 It is favorable to sobriety, industry, and an attachment to good 

 order and quiet. It is exempt from those moral perils which 

 exist in crowded villages ; which are found in the concealment 

 practicable in populous cities ; in the indifference to the value 

 of human life, which prevails there ; and especially in the cor- 

 rupt associations and multiplied crimes and vices, which there 

 inevitably abound. It is more favorable to the manly spirit of 

 liberty, and to the sentiment of a moral and political equality, 

 than where the extremes of human condition, enormous wealth 

 and abject poverty, power and dependence, luxury and squalid- 

 ness, pride and servility, are, as in cities, brought into constant 

 and immediate connexion. 



Agriculture, in the view of every sound political economist, 

 is the foundation of national wealth. It is not easy to see how 

 trade or foreign commerce, legitimately pursued, contribute in 

 any way to the actual increase of the wealth of a country, un- 

 less it be in the value of the labor employed when an equiva- 

 lent is obtained from a foreign country for that labor. Agricul- 

 ture creates wealth ; and gathers its treasures without injury 

 or diminution, from the exhaustless bounty of the Divine Prov- 

 idence in the earth and air. Every agricultural production is 

 therefore a direct creation of so much additional wealth. This, 

 however, is not all. IL is not, as in manufactures, the mere 

 using up of the raw material ; but under good cultivation, the 

 soil itself is put in a condition to become more productive. 

 The land is raised in value, in proportion to the increased in- 

 come, which can be obtained from it. Labor thus applied, 

 may be regarded as a sure and permanent investment of a pro- 

 ductive capital. It is known, that in many parts of the State, 

 under a liberal and judicious husbandry, lands in a measure 

 worthless, or valued at not more than five and ten dollars per 

 acre, by improvements, the expense of which, the first crops 



