410 



NEW ENGLAND FARRIER. 



Sept. 



agriculture has fallen behind the age, although 

 in this State it may be necessarily passing out. 

 But if our journals, books, fairs and lecturers 

 have not kept it up, pray what can ? Have all 

 these, which have been thought so useful, been 

 in vain ? And as to the means of education, a 

 farmer is perpetually at school, conning his great 

 volume, and studying the special capabilities of 

 his own farm, and consequently is, or can be, as 

 well educated for his business as others of dif- 

 ferent vocations are for theirs. Farmers are not 

 so ignorant of their calling as many soft-handed 

 scholars suppose them to be, though they may be 

 hampered for want of means. As to the dignity 

 of farming, the easy, professional man has al- 

 ways looked down upon the hard laboring man 

 in all vocations. It is a whim of society, and no 

 schooling or colleges can regulate it, any more 

 than they can make the sky rain potatoes. Take 

 England, with her numerous agricultural schools 

 for the poor, which are proposed partly to be cop- 

 ied, and do we not find the mass of the farm la- 

 borers only little above sln.ves l)oth in morals and 

 intellect ? So fully did Mr. Colman notice this 

 fact, that his Reports may be regarded as Books 

 of Lamentations. And I think you will not deny 

 that they are considered infinitely more degraded 

 than those here, Avhere we have no such schools 

 or colleges, of any influence, to dignify them. 



T. — Well, freely I admit it and regret it. But 

 you forget the tenant farmer. He is generally an 

 intelligent, well educated person ; is thought — 



W. — Well of, I suppose, because he superin- 

 tends on his pony, and doesn't do what the more 

 aristocratic class regard as drudgery. Excuse me, 

 but I suppose you don't intend to make tenant 

 farmers here because they only are respectable 

 there. 



T. — No, sir, that would be folly ; for here our 

 land-owners are too numerous, and large tracts 

 of land in one man's possession too uncommon. 



W. — Certainly ; let this whim of dignity take 

 care of itself, as it must ; the less farmers think 

 and say of it the better. In spite, however, of 

 the schools, the man who lives at his ease will al- 

 ways be distinguished from the thousands whose 

 necessities oblige them to labor. Upon this sub- 

 ject a philosophical discourse might be written. 



T. — Or a sermon preached. 



W. — Yes ; and this reminds me that you are a 

 clergyman. 



T. — True, but I once worked on a farm. 



W. — And feel an interest in the education of 

 the laboring classes, and particularly the farmer, 

 though you from some cause or other left his hon- 

 orable vocation. 



T. — I left for education, but my sympathies are 

 with him. 



W. — You ought to have returned with both. 

 And you and others say, virtually, that he is ig- 

 norant and degraded, raises meaner crops than 

 they do in England, and don't understand his 

 business, as you unfairly suppose from this latter 

 fact, that there is no uniformity or system in ag- 

 riculture, and that i\\ this land of freedom each 

 one does as he pleases on his own soil. 



T. — Why, yes ; I suppose I must make a gen- 

 eral plea of guilty. 



W. — Now sup]5ose your agricultural parishion- 

 ers should politely say to you, through some "Res- 

 olutions," that your theology is very feeble, unca- 



nonical stuff, that you don't preach as satisfacto- 

 rily as others do, that you have some crude notions 

 of your own, that you preach upon an indefinite 

 system, if upon any, that you learned nothing 

 useful at college, and that you don't understand 

 your business. Would you not consider it in 

 them (even whose servant you are) the concen- 

 tration of impudence ? 



T. — Most certainly I should ; for I think I un- 

 derstand my business. 



W. — Think ? Is not that presumption ? Do 

 you know that you understand your business, and 

 that they are ignorant of theirs ? 



T. — But, Mr. Waddles, they don't understand 

 theology. 



W. — Haven't you taught them ? Do you un- 

 derstand agriculture ? Pray, is theology, with 

 its thousand phases, better understood, and more 

 definite than agriculture ? Do we know anything 

 more about God than we did a hundred years 

 ago ? Cannot the farmer justly say, that religion, 

 so ably represented by a learned profession, is 

 behind the age, with as much force as the clergy- 

 man can aver that farming is ? 



T. — But theology is a very dark and abstruse 

 matter, and it is not my fault that there are so 

 many religions extant, represented by ' equally 

 learned men. 



W. — No, sir, it is not. But you regard agri- 

 culture as so mysterious a science, that it requires 

 learned men to successfully prosecute it. Upon 

 this system of collegiate education, will not learned 

 farmers be as likely to differ as learned theologi- 

 ans ? If I become sick by digging ditches for 

 tile, or by hard labor, or indiscretion, and die, is 

 the learned physician to be told that he don't un- 

 derstand his business ? Perhaps he don't. But 

 who can teach him ? The best lose patients, just 

 as some good farmers occasionally raise poor 

 crops. Nor because some one cures a certain dis- 

 ease in Europe, while many fail in it here, will it 

 do to charge the American physicians with igno- 

 rance. There are a great variety of circumstan- 

 ces to consider. In England, however, generally 

 speaking, the learned profession of medicine has 

 been lately styled "a withered branch of science." 



T. — Why, Mr. AVaddles, nobody does so charge 

 them. 



W. — Perhaps not ; but they might with as much 

 consistency, as some farmers are charged. 



T. — Ah, but please recollect that it is appoint- 

 ed for all men to die, and medicine is an uncer- 

 tain science. 



W. — So is farming ; and it seems also to be 

 foreordained that the elements should sometimes 

 destroy the crops. That is a sprig of my theology. 

 Now as to the other learned profession, the law. 

 Can any member of this profession innocently 

 charge a farmer with ignorance, seeing defects in 

 his operations, while he himself daily becomes 

 entangled in the proverbial intricacies of his own 

 vocation ? 



T. — Good. I don't see how a lawyer could. 



W. — Well, then, it would seem that agriculture 

 here, without colleges, is still up even with theol- 

 ogy, medicine and law — the three learned profes- 

 sions which requu'e such profound erudition from 

 the schools. 



T. — But, Mr. Waddles, you forget that no vo- 

 cation is perfect. 



W. — No, sir, that's just what I've been telling 



