THE REAL IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE. 1 5 



What opportunities it should offer for the practical 

 application of a broad education, useful and entertain- 

 ing to the intelligent being ; an education embracing the 

 physical sciences, geology, chemistry, botany, and vegeta- 

 ble physiology, as well as the historical and classical 

 branches ; the cultivation of a refinement which finds 

 expression in taste, order, and beauty, in the arrange- 

 ment of trees for fruit, protectvon, or ornament, as well 

 as of the field and garden plots ; an intellectual culture 

 which has quite as much a place in the bringing into 

 being of the crop of corn, potatoes, or grains, as an 

 elaborate education for the clergyman or the lawyer ; a 

 culture which should lead the possessor, above all others, 

 to most profitable admiration of the wondrous works of 

 the Great Creator ! 



Turning our attention to the rural economy of the 

 British Isles, we find its history bearing most conclusive 

 testimony to the transcendent importance given in the past 

 by Britons to agriculture, in its economic, its social, and 

 its national bearings. Since the days of the Great Charter 

 love for rural life has been a national characteristic with 

 the English people, while a large proportion of English 

 statesmen have had their chief care in legislating for the 

 interests of the country. Even to-day, 31 per cent, of the 

 Parliament of Great Britain is, in some way, connected 

 with the landed interests. We may well claim that with 

 few other nations has the seat of economic, social, and 

 political power been longer retained in the country ; 

 notwithstanding the vexed problems which have, for 

 centuries, surrounded her land-holding system. 



England's sovereigns, with few exceptions, have also 

 shared with the people this attachment for country, 

 taking the greatest interest in rural pursuits, while the 

 nobility — the temporal lords — have always prided them- 



