Colman's Agricultural Addresses, 107 



culture can be made profitable in New England, and no enter- 

 prising individual would leave its soil to seek wealth in the 

 valleys of the fertile West. 



The condition of farming in New England is fully portrayed 

 in the following extract: — 



The farmers of New England have every reason to thank God 

 for the condition in which they are placed. They need not sigh for 

 more genial climes, nor more fertile soils. These they cannot have 

 without drea<Jlul abatements of health and con-.tbrt. Of all the con- 

 ditions on earth which it has been my lot to see or to read of, I am 

 bold to aver, that I know of none more favorable to health, compe- 

 tence, enjoyment, and intellectnal and moral improvement, than that 

 enjoyed by the rural po[)ulation of New England. I despise the 

 contempt with which some pretend to look down upon us; and the 

 opprobrium which they have the im|)udence to cast upon our habits 

 of thrift and frugality. 1 deem it my highest boast that I am a New 

 England man and a Yankee. 1 do not ask to have a living without 

 labor. This would be asking for a curse instead of a blessing, and 

 a boon for which I have no claim. I only ask that a living shall be 

 secure to me with reasonable labor, and this New England, in her 

 various departments of industry, promises to all her children. 



Better than all this, more than any other community in our coun- 

 try, New England is one common l)rotherhood; linked together by 

 a common sympathy, a common origin, and the interchange of good 

 offices. In our civil and religious blessings, where is a community 

 more favored? Where are the means of education more extended; 

 the institutions of religion better maintained; the public peace more 

 quiet; the standard of morals higher; the course of justice more 

 established: and the courtesies of life more freely rendered? Where 

 is the spirit of inquiry and improvement more active, and Christian 

 benevolence and philanthropy more prompt and diffusive? 



From the beautiful prairies of the great Western valley, fertile as 

 the baid<s of the Nile, and magnificent beyond description, I yet re- 

 turn to my native home in New England with all the warmth of a 

 first love. Her secluded valleys, her venlant meadows, her rounded 

 summits, her dense forests, her rocky mountains, her crystal lakes, 

 her ocean-bound shores, her silver streams, her gushing springs, are 

 all charming to me. Here, too, my friends and brethren dwell. I 

 am satisfied to live under her storujy skies; to encounter her bristling 

 tempests; to dig in her hard soil; for the mind as well as the body 

 is braced by the exposure and the toil. In the midst of what others 

 deem evils, I see innumerable compensations, for which I look in 

 vain to other countries and climes ap|)arently more favored. In 

 whatever direction I turn my eyes, there is every where such an ex- 

 uberance of blessings to those who will jjerform their duty, that it 

 would be the height of ingratitude to complain, and the height of 

 folly to abandon a certain good for that which is at best uncertain 

 and doul)tt'ul. I cling to her with the warmest affection of a child; 

 and, having*been so long sheltered and nourished by her never-failing 

 care and kindness, I ask only that I may find my last resting place in 

 the lap which gave me birth. 



