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This is the voice of all history, and we hazard nothing in 

 saying that nations have risen universally, as agriculture has 

 been fostered, and fallen as that has declined. There have 

 been short-lived peoples, that with small territories or neglect- 

 ed soils, have for a brief space shone with brilliancy in wealth, 

 luxury and war, but they have soon passed away. The empire 

 of Alexander was like a blazing star, and like a meteor dazzled 

 but £ov a moment. Tyre, Carthage, Palmyra, are like exam- 

 ples. In more modern times we have had Venice, Florence, 

 Genoa, and Holland, like trees with great tops, but whose roots 

 took little hold of the soil, and hence they soon withered. — 

 Great Britain might be like unto them, but for the fact that 

 the governing classes are attached to the soil, have their homes 

 in the country, live a portion of the year, and rear their chil- 

 dren, on their ancestral estates, and are actually the best far- 

 mers the world has ever known. At the risk of surprising 

 some who hear me, I assert that agriculture — not her armies, 

 not her wooden walls, not her commerce, and not her manu- 

 factures, as vast as they are — has made Great Britain the 

 mighty power, the modern Rome, she is. Her statesmen all 

 see this ; and agriculture is the goal to which every profes- 

 sional man and every merchant desires to attain. This was 

 the employment of the good Prince Albert, and it is the favor- 

 ite pursuit of the nobility. Not there, as is too often the case 

 here, is it the desire of the sons of farmers to hasten from the 

 paternal acres to the city, but the reverse ; and the daily 

 prayer is that kind Providence may permit a return to the 

 peace and happiness of rural life. 



To-day there are two great races with a future before them, 

 and three great nations of those races, and all they are springs 

 from their attachment to the soil. The Sclavonian race in the 

 Russian empire are in the far East, extending their dominions 

 from the Baltic eastward till they half encircle the globe, and 

 come down to British America in the "West, claiming from the 

 Arctic Sea in Europe and Asia and America to boundaries on 

 the south which they arc constantly pressing out, looking to 



