48 



the most of the advantages he happens to possess — to 

 overcome most easily and most economically the difficulties 

 he may have to encounter — and to employ at once his 

 head and hands with skill in bettering his local condition. 



As an agricultural people, you possess many advantages 

 over the nations of Europe. You are not old enough to 

 have acquired district and state prejudices, which are 

 difficult to overcome, and which in many parts of Europe, 

 long oppose, successfully, the importation of improvements 

 from abroad. 



I may mention, as a most intelligible illustration, the in- 

 troduction of implements imported from other countries, 

 which in Europe is a very slow process. The swing plough 

 of Scotland, for example, has made its way into many dis- 

 tricts of England, has been extensively introduced into some 

 parts of France, Holland, Sweden, and even into Poland 

 and Russia. But into Germany, where attachment to the 

 old tools and methods is so very strong, it makes its way 

 very tardily. And I advert to this instrument — this fun- 

 damental instrument, I may call it, of the practical farmer — 

 because I find it mentioned to your credit, by a German 

 writer, that the swing plough has had a much more willing 

 and ready reception among you than among his own coun- 

 try men, and that Germany has already received many 

 excellent swing ploughs from America.* I have seen 

 plough irons of Scottish manufacture, in use in various 

 parts of North America. It is said that plough irons in con- 

 siderable quantities are now exported from the States in 

 considerable numbers to England. 



Whatever is good in other countries, you are very much 

 in a condition to adopt at once. You have, as I have said, 

 fewer old forms to break through, old methods to abandon, 



* Ueber Englische Landmrthschaft von A von Weckherlin. Stuttgard, 

 1845, p. 81. 



