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the cruelty of man by the penalties of the criminal code. Let 

 the appeal of a starved and emaciated soil touch the instructed 

 conscience of civilized humanity. But whether the duty be 

 recognized or not, the infraction of the law will bring its dire- 

 ful penalty. 



In the light of these considerations, it is not with unmixed 

 satisfaction that we regard the progress of mechanical triumphs 

 over the soil. We welcome at a time when all the resources 

 of the nation are needed, the accession of fifty million acres to 

 the productive land of the country that was made in the ten 

 years of the last census, and we rejoice in an increase of agri- 

 cultural product, greatly outrunning the increase of popula- 

 tion, accomplished by means of improved agricultural imple- 

 ments and thousands of miles of additional railroad. But it 

 is important in connection with the consideration of the con- 

 ditions of a permanently prosperous agriculture, to call atten- 

 tion to the f\ict that these tremendous mechanical agencies, 

 whose aggregate effect is so astounding, are so many mechan- 

 ical advantages in accelerating the process of exhaustion. Us- 

 ing these powerful appliances, you pump the waters from the 

 well no longer by hand, but with a steam-engine. The greater 

 the yearly crop gathered, the greater the drain upon the fer- 

 tilizing elements of the soil, and the sooner their limit is 

 reached ; the more important too it becomes to find some 

 counteractive tendency which shall restore the equilibrium so 

 injuriously disturbed by the deportations of the harvest. 



Let the processes of nature ordained by that wisdom that was 

 at the foundation of the world, direct our inquiry. Throughout 

 her infinite domain to the remotest star, not an atom of matter, 

 not a throb of force, even to the faintest vibration that pul- 

 sates in a ray of light, is ever lost. The thunder that shakes 

 the firmament, the lightning that rends the rock, the tornado 

 that prostrates the forest, the convulsion that rocks the earth, 

 and opens gaping seams which swallow up cities, are opera- 

 tions in which she but combines and recombines her everlast- 

 ing elements. An unending circle of self-adjusting change 



