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that more than compensate for fertile fields and milder 

 skies, — energy, enterprise, aptitude for business, a habit 

 of industry, and all the manly virtues that flourish in the 

 farmer's home. "We may have failed in Norfolk County 

 to raise the greatest crops of corn and grass, though I 

 think rarely ; but we have never failed to raise a crop of 

 fair women who adorn and bless our homes, and men who 

 cherish " constitutional freedom and that passion for lib- 

 erty which are the great and earliest glories of our Eng- 

 lish race. Poor as our soil may be compared with others, 

 ungenial as our climate may be, it is precisely in conse- 

 quence of these, that, under Providence, our flirms are 

 tilled by free men;" that the products of labor are so 

 widely distributed, maintaining so large a number of 

 families in the enjoyment of almost unequalled blessings. 



The moralist looks with satisfaction upon the growing- 

 disposition and ability of the dwellers in cities to indulge 

 that love of rural life, " that affection for green fields, 

 that strong desire for country pleasures, of which at one 

 time or another almost every one is conscious. To till 

 the earth is a kind of natural instinct, outliving many 

 others, carrying men back when wearied with the toils of 

 other callings to their paternal farms, — or, where no an- 

 cestral acres tempt them, making them toil the more ear- 

 nestly that they may at length become the possessors of 

 fields of their own, to which they may in peace retire." 

 To what better use can the rich devote their wealth than 

 to multiply the means of human support while surround- 

 ing themselves with the beauties and comforts of a high- 

 ly cultivated farm, creating out of rude materials the 

 loveliest paradise ? 



To the young men of our County, who have been edu- 

 cated by institutions that teach them to place the highest 

 value upon character, we commend agriculture for its moral 

 tendencies as the great conservative element of society. 



