MR. allen's agricultural address. 
123 
these advantages, the absence of the spirit of asso- 
ciation, leaves him, in effect, the least benefitted at 
the hands of those he elects to legislate for him, of 
all others. 
" Who invents, improves, and perfects the plow, 
and all the nameless implements which alleviate 
his toil and accelerate his labor ? Who analyzes 
his soils, instructs him their various qualities, and 
teaches him how to mix and manure them for the 
most profitable cultivation 1 The mechanic — the 
chemist. Who, ascertaining that his seeds are im- 
perfect and unprofitable, searches foreign lands for 
new or better ones, and introduces them to his 
notice ? The commercial adventurer, or the trav- 
elled man of inquiry and observation. Who, on 
comparing the inferior domestic animals which he 
propagates, and in whose growth and fattening, he 
loses half his toil, and the food they consume, 
sends abroad, regardless of expense, and intro- 
duces the best breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, and 
swine for his benefit ? In nine cases out of ten, 
these labors and benefactions — and their name is 
legion — are performed by those whose occupations 
have been chiefly in other channels, and whose 
agricultural tastes have led them into the spirit of 
improving it. And in how many examples have 
we witnessed the apathy, if not determined oppo- 
sition, with which the farmer proper — or, at least, 
he who claimed to be one — has set his face like 
flint against their adoption, even after their superi- 
ority had been demonstrated beyond a question ! 
" So, too, with the farmers' education. They 
have been content that the resources and the 
bounty of the state, should be lavished upon the 
higher seats of learning, where the more aspiring 
of our youth should receive their benefits, not car- 
ing even to inquire whether such youth should 
again return among them to reflect back the know- 
ledge thus acquired. They have failed to demand 
from the common treasure of the state, those 
necessary institutions which shall promote their 
own particular calling, and which every other pur- 
suit and profession in the land has been most 
active to accomplish. In all this, the latter have 
progressed with railway speed ; while the farming 
interest has stood still with folded arms, and done 
comparatively nothing ; and what good has been 
forced upon it by others, even regarded with sus- 
picion. It is not because we, as farmers, compared 
with others, are either ignorant or stupid. We 
only neglect to assert our rights and appropriate 
the share to which we are entitled in the common 
patronage of the state, to the benefit of our own 
professions. It is for us to ask — to will — to do it. 
We hold the power of the state by our numbers. 
We can control the halls of legislation. We can 
so direct the laws, that we may share equal advan- 
tages in our institutions with others. We desire 
nothing exclusively to our own advantage ; but 
we do deserve an equal participation in those 
institutions established for the common benefit of 
all." 
Again : "The farming interest either stands back 
from your halls of legislation abashed, although 
nominally represented there by its members; or, 
if plucking a momentary courage, by the congre- 
gation of its numbers, on an occasion like the pre- 
sent, it literally shrinks away, either ashamed to 
ask its rights: or, if asking, couched in such a 
subdued tone of humility, that the legislature scarce 
believe you in earnest. This, gentlemen, is your 
attitude before the temporary power which you 
create to govern you ! Contrast it with the con- 
duct of those who seek a different kind of favor 
at its hands. Watch the thousands of applicants 
for corporate and exclusive privileges, and state 
patronage, who have, in times past, beseiged your 
halls of legislation. With what confidence they 
approach, and lay siege, to the law-making power ; 
and how, like ' sturdy beggars,' they persevere, till, 
right or wrong, their importunities are granted." 
Again, he says, in relation to capital and agri- 
culture : " There is another great and responsible 
class among us, who have an abiding interest in 
the exaltation of our agriculture. I speak of the 
wealthy classes distributed throughout our cities, 
towns, and villages. Owing to the free and hap- 
py institutions we enjoy, well-directed industry, 
coupled with perseverance and economy, in most 
branches of business, is tolerably sure to succeed. 
But, with the success of the parent, and his con- 
sequent devotion to the labors of his office, or his 
counting room, that necessary vigilance and watch- 
fulness over the proper education and employment 
of his child, is too often neglected. Honestly feel- 
ing the strength of his own self-reliance, he trusts 
that the son may follow in his own laborious and 
successful course. But a few years only pass, 
and that son has arrived at manhood, vitiated, 
perhaps, by adverse associations, or, if still within 
the path of safety, unfitted by education, or the 
false estimate of his position in life, to succeed in 
the beaten track of parental example. In a great 
majority of cases, capital, toilfully gathered, and 
safely invested, is squandered, or lost in business 
adventure, by the misapplication of the son, while 
the hopeful parent had never considered, that when 
he had furnished the means, he could not regulate 
the brains to control it; and after, perhaps, re- 
peated trials, he withdraws him from business 
altogether, an unsuccessful and disappointed man ; 
and the parent himself, if he escape the ruin of 
the son, is at a loss to know how he shall provide 
for his decent employment, or witness the wasting 
of his own gains, during lifetime, in an unprofit- 
able support; for, in this country, thank God, a 
man must do something to make him respectable. 
And yet the well-meaning and laborious parent is 
scarcely to blame. He has looked abroad among 
the pursuits of the world, and finds none more 
generally successful, than the one he himself has 
occupied. But risen, perchance, from comparative 
poverty himself, he cannot realize that the strong 
incentive for exertion, which existed in his own 
case, is absent in the son, and, therefore, that they 
each look out upon the world from widely differ- 
ent premises. 
" Nor, during all this probation of anxiety and 
solicitude, has it ever occurred to the father, that 
agriculture held out the safest mode of investment 
for a portion of his gains ; and, if not the most 
rapid in accumulation of worldly goods, it was, 
at least, the surest pursuit for his children, in the 
absence of that successful tact which he himself 
possessed for professional, mercantile, or mechani- 
cal life. But he has, on the other hand, imbibed 
