3& 



to succce*. But industry is not the only rirtue, that the cultiva- 

 tion of the earth pronaotes. Piety, sobriety of conduct, siniplicity 

 of manners, hospitality, friendship, and conjugal love, are more 

 frequently found in all their purity among- practical farmers than 

 among other orders of men. For this there are natural causes. 

 The husbandman's employment in the open field, where all is 

 sublime, beautiful and harmonious around him, exercises both 

 the body and mind in a manner most conducive to health and 

 happiness. While sowing bis grain, and nurturing his tender 

 plants, he must be stupid indeed not to feel his dependence on 

 4he beneficent Parent of Nature, for the warming sun and re- 

 freshing showers, without which not a blade of grass can be 

 made to vegetate, or an ear of com be brought to maturity. 

 " He is independent of popular favour, and exempt from those 

 corroding cares, those mortifications, disappointments, jealous- 

 ies and responsibilities, which plant thorns in the pillow of the 

 professional man. The sources of ill will and secret envy among 

 other professions, where one man's loss is another's gain, have 

 no existence among' men employed in Agriculture." Free from 

 the anxiety attendant on the risks iHseparable from mercantile 

 engagements, he unites his fortunes with her'a on whom were 

 placed his earliest, his tenderest affections ; and sees, without 

 regret, an increasing family, looking to him for bread, instruc- 

 tion, and protection. 



An Agricultural life is the natural condition of man. He was 

 placed in the garden of Eden to dress and to keep it. When 

 driven from paradise, he was commanded to till the ground from 

 zi)hich he was taken. And wherever the great body of the peo- 

 ple have yielded a willing obedience to this command, and not 

 sought to supply their wants by other inventions, the earth has 

 ever yielded them the necessaries of life in abundance. It i» 

 astonishing to reflect on the immense population which a small 

 territory '-^ll cultivated will sustain. '* Egypt once contained 

 forty millions of inhabitants, and was then able to supply sur- 

 rounding nations with corn. A few years since, when the same 

 territory contained only three millions, a French army of twenty- 

 five thousand men found it difficult there to subsist. Sicily, 

 when it contained in the small territory of Syracuse alone fo.ui- 



