76 
THE CULTIVATOR 
Feb 
as a body, readily to appreciate the labors, or to listen to the counsels 
of men of science, however prudent and practical they may be. 
3d. The special deficiency, among all* grades of the agricultural 
community, (in England among landlords, among tenants and among 
laborers,) of any instruction in the elementary parts of those branch¬ 
es of knowledge by which the principles of agriculture are especial¬ 
ly illustrated. 
4th. The extreme sub-division of the land, which you may not see 
in this country for many generations, but which already exists as a 
great evil in some of the countries of Europe. It prevents the use 
of improved implements, and therefore the encouragement of agri¬ 
cultural mechanics—because the farmer is too poor to buy anything 
but the merest necessaries. It prevents also the purchase of ma¬ 
nures, natural or artificial, to any extent—the employment of paid 
labor in farming—and generally all those forms of improvement 
which demand an outlay of capital, or to which the occupation of a 
considerable breadth of land is a necessary pre-requisite. 
5lh. An obstacle peculiar to your country, and to its present tran¬ 
sition state—and it is really a serious obstacle to improvement—is the 
feeble local attachment by which the proprietors of the more newly 
settled districts are bound to their farms. This appears in the fact 
that so many of your farms are for sale. Few families have yet be- 
oorae so attached to their locations as to be unwilling to sell them, if 
a fair offer be made. The head of the family trusts to his own skill 
to do better elsewhere for all his household, with the money for 
which they may be sold. This stale of things will pass away as age 
creeps over your commonwealths and institutions, but in the mean¬ 
time it operates as a serious hindrance to the expenditure of money 
in embellishment or in costly improvements, which might possibly 
not enhance, in a proportionate degree, the value cf these properties 
in the market. 
I merely mention these social obstacles, for althou gh some of them 
do, as I am informed, exist to a certain extent in this State of New 
York, yet I would rather express my high opinion of the much good 
I have found among you, than appear to detract from your just de¬ 
serts, by discovering and commenting upon wants and defects which 
in your hur-ry to get forward, you have as yet scarcely had time to 
discover, much less to supply or remove. 
Encouragement to Agricultural Science in the United 
States.— Of the good I see, for example, I may specify the enlight¬ 
ened desire exhibited by your several State governments , to promote 
the applications of science to your home agriculture, as it is striking¬ 
ly shown in the numerous surveys and reports which they have 
caused to be made and published, in respect to the geology and agri¬ 
cultural capabilities of the several parts of the Union. In this re¬ 
spect your State of New York occupies a most distinguished posi¬ 
tion, and its inhabitants will no doubt reap from their well directed 
exertions, a rich harvest of deserved fruit. 
Again—this great Agricultural Fair, the implements and stock 
here exhibited, the countless numbers who have entered the show 
yard to see them, and who now surround us—impress upon a foreign 
visitor, the obvious usefulness and efficient management of your Ag¬ 
ricultural Societies, how much they are doing, and how zealously 
they are supported. To those at a distance, who cannot look upon 
you with their own eyes, your annual publications speak. I have 
myself been both interested and instructed by the former volumes of 
the Transactions of your Society, and I have heard them, in a pub¬ 
lic meeting in Scotland, most highly spoken of, and favorably con¬ 
trasted with the published proceedings, even of the Highland and 
Agricultural Society of Scotland. It gives me pleasure to express 
my opinion, that the volume for the present year is not only equal to 
its predecessors, but contains matter highly creditable to the Socie¬ 
ty, and useful to the advancement of scientific agriculture. 
Farther—The interest which, as individuals, you take in the pro¬ 
motion of agriculture, by the acquisition and application of new 
knowledge, may be gathered from two circumstances— -first, from the 
establishment and liberal endowment of chairs of science in connec¬ 
tion with agriculture, by private parties, in two, at least, of your 
state universities—a liberality at once most patriotic and most judi¬ 
ciously applied; and setond, from the causes which led to the recent 
visit to Europe of your countryman, Mr. Colman. Him we were 
led to look upon as a deputy from the individual farmers of this and 
the adjoining states, to the farmers and agricultural assemblies of 
Great Britain—for it w:is your individual encouragement and sub¬ 
scriptions, I believe, and those of your societies, which induced and 
enabled him to come among us. As your deputy, he was every 
where received—every where kindly, I believe, as so kind-hearted 
a man deserved to be—and every where with a desire to give him 
the fullest information on every subject that might be use-fill to you. 
Gentlemen, in the minds of some of your countrymen whom I 
have met, not so I hope in yours, a wrong impression exists as to the 
feelings of my countrymen towards you as a community, or as indi¬ 
viduals. We do not envy or regret your rapid growth and prosperi¬ 
ty as a people—we are proud of it. We do not dislike you individu¬ 
ally—we are predisposed, rather, to see good in you and to like you. 
Whatever sour men on either side of the water may say, you may 
rest assured that there is a corner in almost every heart at home, 
which especially warms towards the North American, whether 
from the Colonies or from the States, and a. warm seat at many a 
fire side, if he will come and occupy it. It may be old fashioned, 
gentlemen, but we all still think at home that blood is thicker than 
water, and if any of you doubt it, we beg you, like Mr. Colman, to 
come among us, and honestly and frankly to try whether it is so or 
not 
if I were'asked to give a special reason why a knowledge of the 
scientific principles of agriculture is more necessary among you than 
among any other existing people, I would mention the great extent 
of your territorial dominion, and the varied soils, climates and cul¬ 
tures, which your people encounter, as your dominion over the for¬ 
est and prairies extends. When you take this fact in connection 
with an other, which is no less familiar to you, that a general set of 
your population, like a great moving tide, is carrying tlfem towards 
the south and west—so that the old tillage and crops of one year are 
often deserted by the mover for a new form of tillage, and the cul¬ 
ture of new crops in the next—you will see how useful to the shift¬ 
ing agriculturist himself it must be, and how beneficial to the whole 
community, that he should possess some degree of familiarity with 
those principles, not only of Geology to which I have already made 
especial allusion, but of Chemistry and Botany also, which shall ena¬ 
ble him in whatever circumstances of soil, of climate or of tillage 
he is placed, to make the most of the advantages he happens to pos¬ 
sess—to overcome most easily and most economically the difficulties 
he may have to encounter—and to employ at once his head and 
hands with skill in bettering his local condition. 
As an agricultural people, you possess many advantages over the 
nations of Europe. You are not old enough to have acquired dis¬ 
trict and state prejudices, which are difficult to overcome, ana which 
in many parts of Europe, long oppose, successfully, the importation 
of improvements from abroad. 
I may mention, as a most intelligible illustration, the introduction 
of implements imported from other countries, which in Europe is a 
very slow process. The swing plow of Scotland, for example, 
has made its way into many districts of England, has been exten¬ 
sively introduced into some parts of France, Holland, Sweden, and 
even into Poland and Russia. But into Germany, where attach¬ 
ment to the old tools and methods is so very strong, it makes its way 
very tardily. And I advert to this instrument—this fundamental in¬ 
strument, I may call it, of the practical farmer—because I find it 
mentioned to your credit, by a German writer, that the swing plough 
has had a much more willing and ready reception among you than 
among his own countrymen, and that Germany has already received 
many excellent swing plows from America.* I have seen plow 
irons of Scottish manufacture, in use in various parts of North 
America. It is said that plow irons in considerable quantities are 
now exported from the States in considerable numbers to England. 
Whatever is good in other countries, you are very much in a con¬ 
dition to adopt at once. You have, as I have said, fewer old forms 
to break through, old methods to abandon, old tools to lay aside, and 
old rules and regulations to abolish. Above all, as proprietors, you 
work every man for himself and for the profit of his family. Not 
only are feudal superiorities, servitudes, serfdom and tithes, unknown 
among you, but even rents are not, as with us, to be made up on 
two dark days of every year. What ought to stand in the way then 
of your rapid progress in this most important art? 
Another great advantage possessed by the agriculturists of this 
country, you will both understand and estimate. As a nation you 
commence your agricultural career at the point which we have at¬ 
tained. The eminence which we have reached after long climbing, 
you start from. You have the benefit of all our knowledge and ex¬ 
perience, and—unwearied with previous labor, or satisfied with the 
idea, as too many of our farmers are, that you have already done 
very much—you must progress beyond what we have at present at¬ 
tained to. And with the intellect and energy you inherit, you must 
and will progress. It cannot fail indeed to prove a great blessing to 
mankind at large, that so many new minds, unfettered by old re¬ 
straints of prejudice or partial legislation, or conventional custom, 
are now directed in this country towards the varied arts of social 
life. Especially must intellectual exertion on your part, in reference 
to any of the arts of life, benefit us in Great Britain—whom a com¬ 
mon parentage, individual ties of blood, and a unity of speech, con¬ 
nect, and whom now the broad Atlantic, more than bridged over, 
almost brings together again into a common home. What you 
think, reacts upon our thoughts; what you speak, insensibly afl'ecls 
our speech; and your literature and ours, are read and have their 
influence in both countries. What each discovers sooner becomes 
property of the other, than in the case of nations who speak differ¬ 
ent tongues; and a step in advance on either side of the Atlantic, 
carries the arts of the other side along with it. We are not selfish— 
perhaps I might say we are eminently unselfish—in wishing you to 
become agricultural improvers. But of all the arts, it may be said 
more truly of agriculture than of any other, that it is of no country 
The producer of the common staff* of human life, ought in all its 
perfection, to be the common property of all. In rivaling each other 
in our endeavors to push forward this highest art of life, Britain and 
America will be striving only which can do most for the human race. 
And if we in Britain should benefit hereafter by the advances you 
are destined to make,—beyond what you have obtained from us,—it 
will enable us only the more speedily to aid in diffusing a knowledge 
of these advances among the other nations of the globe. 
What is the moral of this discourse—what its immediate applica¬ 
tion to you whom I have the honor to address ? 
Is there improvement any where—let it be seen among you. Is 
there agricultural progress any where—you ought not to stand still. 
Are there means of bettering the mode of culture any where—you 
possess the same. Is there greater knowledge any where—it is 
within your reach. Is there energy and determination any where 
—these qualities are inherited in as great strength by you as by any 
other people. Is the climate favorable any where for special kinds 
of culture—you possess all climates, and may take a leaf from the 
farming book of every country. Is knowledge necessary anywhere 
—it is so among you; if not because of an over-crowded, yet be¬ 
cause of a constantly moving, and at present rather retrograde agri¬ 
cultural population. 
And if in consequence of its progressive tendency, the Teuton 
blood of the Anglo Saxon shade, is destined, as some believe, to con¬ 
quer and possess this vast continent from sea to sea; it is surely the 
wish and purpose of the Deity, that such possession should be made 
a source of happiness both to the ruling and to the ruled, and a means 
of furthering at the same time, that general advancement of the hu¬ 
man race which all philanthropists so ardently anticipate. 
*Ueber Englische Land m rihschajt von A. von Wechherlin. Stutt- 
gard, 1845, p. 81. 
