AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



^ 



PUMLISHED BY JOSEPH nUECK & CO., NO 52 NORTH MARKET STREET, (Agricultural Warehouse.) 



VOL.. XVII. J 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 8, 1830. 



[9IO. 44. 



N. E. FARMER. 



ANNUAL ADDRESS 

 Before the Kentucky State JigricuUural Society — de- 

 livered at the Capitol in Frankfort, January 14-, 

 1839, on the dignity of tht profession of agricid- 

 ture, and the propriety of legislation for its im- 

 provement. By Co!. C. S. TovD, of Shelby. 

 Gentlemen of the Stat;; Agricultohai, So- 

 ciety: In compliance with the invitation of our 

 wortliy President, I appear before yon tliis evening-, 

 in behalf of the great interest which sustains every 

 other interest in the community; and relying upon 

 your indulsient feelings towards a cultivator of the 

 soil, entreat you to forget, in the magnitude of the 

 subject, any deficiencies of the advocate. 



In entering upon the duty assigned to me, I feel 

 a consciousness of the difficulties which beset my 

 path, arising as well from my own inadequacy to 

 the task, as from the nature of the subject, which 

 is generally considered not to be susceptible of 

 those illustrations and attractions, rendered so in- 

 teresting in this age of irapruvemeni, by the exer- 

 tions of cultivated intellect applied to the depart- 

 ments of law, physic, moral an<i political economy. 

 All that I can hope then to effect, will be to lead 

 abler minds to reap laurels in a field in which, as 

 a pioneer, T shall be content if the public mind be 

 directed to the subject. 



As the advancement of the cause of agriculture 

 is the exclusive object contemplated in the forma- 

 tioTi of this society and of the annua! meeting on 

 this day, I propose upon this occasion, to examine 

 this subject in two of its most interesting aspects — 

 first, to present to my brother farmers some of the 

 considerations which should lead them to form and 

 act upon, a more exalted estimate of the dignity of 

 their profession ; and then, to offer some sugges- 

 tions, which, it is hoped, may have a tendency to 

 stimulate the legislative councils to that encourage- 

 ment of the cultivation of the soil, which an en- 

 lightened forecast deems to be so intimately con- 

 nected with the public welfare. 



In the first place, as to the dignity which belongs 

 to the pursuits of agriculture. The illustrious 

 Franklin, whose eulogy was conveyed in such fe- 

 licitous language by the eloquent Mirabeau — •" Eri- 

 puit crslo fulnien sceptrumque tyrannis ,•" the sage, 

 whose fame shed lustre on the age in which he liv- 

 ed, and who sustained towards his country the en- 

 vied attitude of mechanic, patriot, statesman and 

 philosopher, has pronounced " agriculture to be the 

 most honorable of all employments, being the most 

 independent. The farmer," says ho, "has no need 

 of popular favor, nor of the favor of the great ; the 

 success of his crops depending only on the blessing 

 of God upon his honest industry." The occupation 

 of the farmer is not only honorable, as being the 

 first pursuit of man, and as having engaged tlie at- 

 tention of the most virtuous and illustrious men in 

 every age, but it is the most honorable for the pre- 

 cise reason stated by Franklin — it is the most inde- 

 pendent. The other pursuits of men, in all their 

 diversified forms, depend, in a greater or less de- 



gree upon the success of those who exert tlieir en- 

 ergies in other avocations — the merchant depends 

 upon the farmer and manufacturer — -the mechanic 

 U))on the farmer and merchant, and the professional 

 man upon all of them ; but Franklin, as well as the 

 experience of ages proclaims, that the farmer is in- 

 dependent of all save " the blessing of God upon 

 his honest industry." 



Washington, the father of his country, has de- 

 clared that " he' knew of no pursuit in which more 

 real and important services can be rendered to ilny 

 country than by improving its agriculture." Socra- 

 tes, one of the most eminent of the ancient philoso- 

 pliers, says, " agriculture seems to possess an in- 

 contestible right to the title of parent and nurse of 

 all other professions ;" and the celebrated Vatlel, of 

 modern times, whose treatise on the Lav/ of Na- 

 tions is regarded as the standard of international 

 fluty amongst the most enlightened states of 'the 

 l)resent day, says, "of all the arts, tillage or agri- 

 culture is doubtless the most useful and necessary ; 

 it is the nursing father of a state ; the cultivation 

 of the earth causes it to produce an infinite increase ; 

 it forms the surest resource and the most solid fund 

 of rich commerce for the people who enjoy a happy 

 climate." 



Agriculture was the first avocation of man, Ad- 

 am being directed to " dress and keep" the garden 

 of ^]den. This was his duty in the days of prime- 

 val innocence ; and afler the fall, he was required 

 to earn his bread by the " sweat of his brow." The 

 f'rst valuable improvements in husbandry were 

 made by Noah, who, though a preacher of righteous- 

 ness, was called a man of the ground, because of 



subduing and fertilizing the soil. The divine com 

 mand to the Jews, "break up your fallow ground 

 and sow not among thorns," is applicable to all the 

 nations who live by the cultivation of the soil ; and 

 I indulge the hope that there is not a christian far- 

 mer in our land, who, v.-hile he recognises the spir- 

 itual beauty of the passage which has immediate 

 reference to the cultivation of the heart, does not feel 

 its literal force in calling upofi him to adopt all 

 practicable means of improving the soil conmiitted 

 to his care. And here it may not be impertinent 

 to remark, that if the mass of my brother farmers 

 would "indeed break up their fallow ground and 

 sow not among thorns," as well in relation to their 

 husbandry as to the cultivation of their minds, we 

 should not be placed, as a profession, in the rear of 

 other less worthy pursuits. 



The descendants of Abraham in Palestine, the 

 Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the ancient Persians, the 

 Phoenicians, the Athenians, and the Romans, includ- 

 ing those in the highest offices in each of those na- 

 tions, manifested the highest regard to the pursuits 

 of agriculture. Hesiod and Xenophon of the Greeks, 

 and Cato, Varro, Virgil, Pliny and Columella, of 

 the Romans, published treatises on the subject — 

 and the greatest im| rovement was made in agricul- 

 ture during those periods of the ancient nations, 

 when their institutions approached more nearly to 



historians, remarked that "agriculture is the nurs- 

 ing mother of the arts, for, where it succeeds pros- 

 perously, there the arts thrive ; but where the earth 

 necessarily lies uncultivated, there the arts are ex- 

 tinct." In the best days of the Roman republic, 

 he was entitled to the highest praise who " best 

 cultivated his spot of ground," and such should be 

 now the tone of public sentiment. Montesquieu 

 has observed that "countries are not cultivated in 

 proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty ;" 

 and the conductor of the New Y'ork "Cultivator," 

 who unites in himself, more eminently than any 

 other citizen of the republic, the fare qualities of 

 scientific knowledfje and practical experience with 

 a polished pen, lays it down as almost a maxim, 

 that "the mental and moral condition of an agri- 

 cultural district is in the ratio of its improvement 

 in husbandry." 



There is a moral beauty in the sentiment of 

 Franklin, which maintains that the farmer is inde- 

 pendent of all, save "the blessing of God upon his 

 honest industry.' Those who plough the land, as 

 well as those who plough the sea, are uiider pecu- 

 liar obligations to recognise a special and superin- 

 tending Providence. The farmer has the promise 

 of seed-time and harvest ; the seasons, the lain, the 

 warmth of the sun, the growth of the soil, and all 

 the operations of nature, admonish him of the exer- 

 tions of an omnipotent energy. In the country he 

 seems to Stand in the midst of the grand theatre of 

 God's power, and seeing that the succession of heat 

 and moisture constitutes the sources of production, 

 he is led to feel .n ..he action of the sun and the 

 descent of dew and rain, his obligations to rever- 



his advancement in agriculture and his invention for-"ence that unsearchable sovereign without whose 



perniission not a " sparrow falls to the ground," nor 

 a blade of grass springs up. The sailor, too, looks 

 through the elements to the great first cause, and 

 the man at sea must be insensible to all the high 

 and holy motives of gratitude, who does not feel his 

 own impotency, not less than a reverential awe of 

 that Supreme Power whom the winds and waves 

 obey. 



Ancient and modern poets* have dignified the 

 cultivation of the soil by the majesty and melody 

 of their immortal songs. Virgil, the great Roman, 

 has left an imperishable monument of his devotion 

 to tlie cause of agriculture ; and strange as it may 

 seem to some of our modern farmers, some of whom 

 affect not to need any instruction in the science up- 

 on whose successful application they depend for 

 support, Virgil gives in his Georgics much of what 

 constitutes the present mode of ameliorating the 

 soil. An interesting extract which may be found 

 in Book I. line 79-SO, speaks of the Roman prac- 

 tice of saturating the parched soil with rich animal 

 manure, of scattering sordid ashes upon the exhaust- 

 ed lands, ando' giving rest to their fields by a rota- 

 tion of crops ; to which if we a;ld the later process 

 of renovating through the introduction of the gras- 

 ses and the application of rnarl, we shall have the 

 present improved mode of farming as practised in 

 our own country. Milton, the Homer of modern 



the lepublican character. Xenophon, one of their ' times, (both of the;n blind to natural, though touch- 



