Xll AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL AND 



The school that has demonstrated the practicability of the scheme, 

 is Stroegland, in Wurtemburg. Here the pupils live en famille 

 with their superintendent, and are instructed by different professors 

 in the theory and practice of agriculture, and the arts and sciences 

 that elevate and adoru rural life. 



The sons of high lineages and wealth, there study and labor with 

 the child of want; and in order to give a stimulus to industry, each 

 student receives a remuneration equivalent to his labor. 



A brighter day is dawning on agriculture in England, Belgium 

 and France. Witness the professional police among the different 

 countries and provinces in those enlightened kingdoms. Feudal ten- 

 ures and oppressive burthens on the productive classes are gradually 

 vanishing before the lights of science and reason, and man bound 

 <lown by the wrongs of centuries of ignorance and tyranny, is be- 

 ginning to assume the dignity of his nature. Even royalty, cloyed 

 with empty pomp and pageantry, retires into the shades of rural se- 

 questration, and calls around him associations of learned and practi- 

 cal farmers, and courts pre-eminence in conversations and delibera- 

 tions. 



Your committee need not stop here. The experience of a century 

 has proved the advantage of a scientific education for the practice 

 of agriculture. Indeed, there is no university in Europe without a 

 chair devoted to rural economy; and it may not be deemed imperti- 

 nent to remark, that a contemplated plan for agricultural education 

 is foreign to our other literary institutions, fostered by the bounty of 

 the State or supported by private munificence. Their course of in- 

 struction, however admirable for the foundation of general literature 

 and professional avocations, is not the appropriate sphere to form 

 the habits of the farmer, and fit him for the peculiar and active life 

 to which he is destined. 



But it may perhaps be said, that the agriculturist needs no theor}', 

 but his acquisitions should be moulded by the usages and routine of 

 hiisbandry. Can any one who is imbued with the liberal and en- 

 lightened spirit of the age, array /jrac^fce in opposition to theory? 

 What is theory but a generalization from facts, or a knowledge of 

 the laws that link eflfects with their causes ? Let the idea be illus- 

 trated. The 'practice of agriculture will lead the operator to spread 

 bis fields with a great quantity of lime. This, for a short period, will 

 render the soil more actively fertile, but ultimately it will exhaust it 



