ExniBrnoN Addresses. 143 



possible that the agricultural products of Russia, may exceed our 

 own. The wealth which France has drawn from her soil is marvelous. 

 And JajDan and Ilindostan have astonished the world with the dili- 

 gence and activity and skill with which the soil of those countries 

 has been cultivated, and has been forced to pour forth all its resources 

 by the application of fertilizers of every description. But we should 

 bear in mind that the agriculture of all these countries is conducted 

 by classes of people who are forced into a subservient order in society. 

 The land itself, in many of tliem, is held in large estates, and is ten- 

 anted by- a class whose chief business it is to direct those operations 

 on the land, which are to yield them an ample return for the capital 

 invested. It is so in Russia, where labor is wholly subservient to 

 capital, and where the division of the empire into small estate, is 

 impossible. It is so in England, where the laborer is merely a tenant, 

 and makes his arrangements under the eye of a landlord. It is so in 

 France, even where, notwithstanding the division of the territory 

 into small estates, the whole business of farming is conducted by 

 sabots, that rural population of France who, even within a half league 

 of all the wealth and refinement of Paris, retain all their ignorant 

 rusticity, and cover the kingdom with the inanimate atmosphere of 

 the most primitive and least ambitious modes of agriculture. It is 

 the kings and princes, the nobility and families of distinction, who 

 draw their income from the land, and who vie with each other in the 

 agricultural exhibitions. The small farmers follow their lead. Wher- 

 ever great agricultural improvements are made it is under their pat- 

 ronage. It has been said, for instance, of the cultivation of the turnip 

 in England : " On the value and importance of the turnip crop to 

 England it is unnecessary to expatiate. Not only does it enable the 

 farmer to supply the consumer with fresh meat during the winter, 

 instead of the salted food upon which our ancestors had almost exclu- 

 sively to depend, but also partially supplies the place of a fallow ; 

 it imparts to the land a degree of fertility which, under proper 

 management, secures a succession of crops for the following years of 

 rotation. It is indeed the sheet anchor of light soil cultivation, and 

 the basis of the alternate system of English husbandry, to which 

 every class of the community is so much indebted." And yet so slow 

 was the English farmer to adopt this root as an article of field cul- 

 ture, -that the zeal with which Lord Townshend urged its cultivation 

 and set forth its importance, won for him the name of " Turnip " 

 Townshend, in derision ; and nothing but his position and wealth 



