RN PLANTER. 



201 



feel to comply with the request of the Club, 

 backed as it is by the intrinsic excellence of the 

 production, to give Dr. Morton's address entire 

 to the public; but the nature and limits of our 

 work admonish us that we must be content to 

 confine ourselves to such portions of this elo- 

 quent production, as are most strictly of an agri- 

 cultural character. Upon the benefit of agri- 

 cultural association the Doctor with great point 

 and force, remarks : 



"All great objects are effected by similar com- 

 binations. Would you construct a railroad, open 

 a canal, establish a bank, your individual con- 

 tributions would be brought up to raise a fund 

 for the purpose, and what individual strength 

 could not accomplish, your collective force would 

 easily achieve ; and each individual wguM share 

 in the profits in proportion to the amount of his 

 investment. But in agricultural associations, 

 when each one contributes his mite of informa- 

 tion, we have at once a common fund or capital, 

 whence each one may not only draw the whole 

 amount of his investment, but may appropriate 

 to his own use the whole capital stock of the 

 whole company, and yet leave that capital not 

 only undiminished, but rapidly augmenting. — 

 We must not be content to appropriate this va- 

 luable capital to our exclusive use. Sharing it 

 with our neighbors and countrymen cannot ex- 

 haust it ; like the widow's cruise, the more we 

 dispense from it, the more rapidly will it be re- 

 plenished." 



To arrest the tide of emigration, the Doctor 

 makes the following eloquent appeal: 



" Emigration, like a blight, has thinned our 

 ranks. What but bad tillage and neglect of 

 our lands has entailed this evil upon us 1 ? The 

 father, as a consequence of the destructive abuse 

 of his native soil, seldom enjoys the reflection, 

 that the home of his youth, of his ^manhood, 

 and of his old age, is to be the home of his off- 

 spring, or that the bones of the generation that 

 succeeds him, who have been his solace in life, 

 in deaih, will repose by his side. Too often, 

 alas ! he finds that his own reckless waste of 

 his patrimonial soil has driven them even in his 

 lifetime to seek in the wilds of the West an asy- 

 lum from poverty and want, and in all probabi- 

 lity, whilst they wander there, the last sad offi- 

 ces due from his beloved ones, are left to stranger 

 hands. This should not be. Thus has Virginia 

 been robbed of her hardy yeomanry and the 

 brightest gems and flowers of her population to 

 fill up other lands, to people other nations ; her 

 glory has departed with them ; while her spa- 

 cious fields, her widening deserts, where howl 

 the wolf and herd the wild deer, might still 

 have been the home of her departed sons. 

 Vol. III.— 26 



u Shall this unhappy state of things continue ?• 

 Shall the plea of necessity still carry off those 

 who might adorn the public or the private sta- 

 tion ? Shall the listening senates of other lands 

 admire and applaud, while their halls ring with 

 the eloquence of Virginia's expatriated sons? — 

 Shall the young West cast the world in shade 

 by the greatness of her statesmen and the 

 brightness of her historic page, and all this at 

 the expense of this their mother country ; and 

 shall nothing be done to stay the destructive 

 tide? Improved modes of agriculture might 

 have prevented this ; the tide may yet be rolled 

 back. It is you and such as you ; it is the pa- 

 triot hearts of Mecklenburg, of old Virginia, 

 that must come up to the rescue. It is the cause 

 of our country, of our public and private interests, 

 of our native soil, of our beloved old Common- 

 wealth. The happiness of the family circle, of 

 the social bond, is at stake. Let family then 

 unite with family, friend with friend, farmer with 

 farmer, club with club, in the great work. Our 

 lands still possess the elements of fertility ; ihey 

 are only crippled, not killed. Industry and en- 

 terprise, guided by intelligence and skill, with 

 the stimulating the enlightening, the reviving 

 influence of social combinations, will do much 

 towards the great work of restoring them to 

 their original fertilitv, and raisin<r the Old Do- 

 minion again to her high and enviable position 

 among the nations of the earth. Ought not 

 every patriot to aspire to this? Should not 

 every good citizen labor for it? I may be 

 deemed an enthusiast in this interesting subject, 

 but I glory in such enthusiasm. 



" My grey hairs admonish me that I am 

 growing old, but I hope to live yet long enough 

 to see, under the influence of the redeeming 

 spirit of the age, guided by the intelligence and 

 enterprise of the great body of our agriculturists, 

 this whole county clothed in new garments ;> 

 the meadow, instead of the broom field, fattening 

 grasses for pasturage, instead of the poor and 

 impoverishing natural weeds and herbage, and 

 the merry whistling ploughman coming home 

 at eve rejoicing in the prospect of the plenteous 

 fruits of his labor, instead of the dull, cheerless 

 wight, who is ever haunted with dreams of cat- 

 tle on the lift, jaded teams, and starvation, or 

 the West. 



" We have seen in the progress of the last 

 five or six years ample encouragement to press 

 on. I, for one, will not be discouraged. I am 

 resolved to do all I can, not only at home, but. 

 wherever I go, in forwarding the great woik of 

 improvement, and I feel assured, gentlemen, that 

 you will join heart and hand with me in this 

 laudable pledge, and that you, equally with me, 

 look forward to the day when our fields shall 

 bring, instead of three, four and five for one, 

 some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred 

 for one." 



