29 



pleasure in the trades and professions, less labor, or fewer 

 anxieties, than on the farms. 



Over all the rest of the world the husbandman has one sure 

 advantage — he can have a sufHciency for the supply of his real 

 •wants, if not an abundance of wealth. The sun will rise on 

 his corn as well as on his richer neighbors ; the rain will come 

 for his pastures as much as though his cellar was full of gold ; 

 if he labors, he will have something to eat. There is none of 

 that squalid poverty in the country that crowds the lanes and 

 alleys, of the town. If vsrorst comes to worst, the farmer may 

 live upon the fruits of his own acres, and nobody can starve 

 him ; nobody can make him afraid. Politics may change and 

 statesmen go up or down ; creeds may pass away, or keep 

 churches wrangling and old ladies quarreling ; storms may 

 sweep the seas and bury the hopes of merchants in their deep 

 waves ; tariffs may be made or unmade to the alarm of manu- 

 facturers ; and financial revulsions may shake tradesmen and 

 bankers, but the farmer remains lord of himself, king of his 

 own household, ruler of his own acres, disposer of his own 

 sheep and cattle. He calls no man master ; none may control 

 his action ; none govern his vote ; none dictate his creed ; none 

 tell him what he shall think, how he shall dress, what shall be 

 the cut of his cloth or the fashion of his boots. Oh, the glo- 

 rious independence of the man who lives on his own earth, 

 which he owns from the centre of the globe to the high 

 heavens ; who can snap his fingers in the face of the world 

 and feel that he is himself, and the equal of any other man, 

 to whom he can say as Black Hawk, the Indian chief, said to 

 General Jackson — •' You are one man and I am another man." 

 Not Napoleon himself, whose nod makes the nations bend, is 

 more a man than the free, intelligent, independent American 

 farmer. Not the Czar of all the Russias ; not prophet or 

 prince, not lordling by birth, a Jew in wealth, is more indc- 

 pcndfent than he. He labors, it is true, but his is a noble labor 

 that makes the world richer and better, holier and happier. It 

 is not the slavery of the South that knows a master and a lash . 



