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AGRICULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES, —

AN

ADDRESS

DELIVERED 14th APRIL, 1841,

BEFORE THE

“AMERICAN INSTITUTE,

NEW YORK.

BY HENRY’ COLMAN,

COMMISSIONER FOR THE AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF MASSACHUSETTS,

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE INSTITUTE.

CQ ’

q, y H. A. CHAPIN & Co., New York, 138 Futon Street;
OTIS, BROADERS & Co., Bosron;

KIMBLE & SHARPLESS, PuiapeEtpaia.

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TERRE Belt

oo lies

TO DANIEL WEBSTER,

SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES;
A FARMER OF MASSACHUSETTS,

ae AND A
A FIRM FRIEND OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY,
WHOSE DEEP SENSE

OF THE

IMPORTANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST
AND OF AN

IMPROVED AGRICULTURE

Is JUSTLY APPRECIATED
BY THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY,

.THIS ADDRESS IS RESPECTFULLY 1NSCRIBED BY
HIS FRIEND AND SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.

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Mr. Preswent ano GENTLEMEN
OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE,—

1 am happy to meet here many of the friends of Agriculture of
the State of New York, and of other parts of the country. But
for an unfeigned distrust of my ability to do justice to the occasion,
there would be no abatement of this pleasure. With liberal minds,
however, honesty and heartiness of purpose in a good cause will
secure a candid, I may hope, a favorable hearing.

In some parts of the country rude monuments are found composed
of stones merely thrown together, which are supposed to have been
erected by the aborigines, in order to mark some public object or
event not now known. It is understood that, in forming these erec-
tions, individuals were accustomed, when they passed them, to lay
each a single stone of a larger or smaller size on the pile, which
was thus continually increasing. After such an example, I am glad
to bring my humble contribution to a cause which alike concerns
us all: Though it be a mere pebble which I cast upon the heap,
and be lost among the splendid contributions of others, it will
testify my sense of duty and my desire to do what I can for the
common object and, at the same time, may serve to increase
the general mass. The ant-hill is composed of atoms: the hive is
filled by.the contributions of thousands of minute laborers: the
ocean is swollen by the thin vapors, condensed on the cloud-capt
mountains, hundreds of miles in the interior. One of the most
beautiful and one of the sublimest views of the divine Providence is
in the fact, everywhere established so far as our observation extends,
that nothing in the divine creation is lost; nothing stands alone ;
nothing is without its use. Every part of nature, from the largest
to the smallest, from the planet to the atom, from the sun which
uradiates a system, to the finest beam of light which strikes our
vision, from the rain-charged clouds, which deluge a wide territory,
to the minutest dew-drop, which sparkles in the opening flower ;
all have their action and use, and are bound together by a reci-
procity of dependence and advantage.

6

The matter for our discussion on this occasion is Agriculture, and
particularly the condition of Agriculture in the United States.
From the extent of this subject my observations can be only general
and cursory. Many volumes, indeed, would be required thoroughly
to discuss it.

The intimate connection of this subject with the business and
pleasures of life, as well as with man’s intellectual and moral im-
provement, can hardly be overstated. From the earth man derives
his supplies: without its products he could not live. These pro-
ducts are the fruits of cultivation. If he were left to depend on the
spontaneous fruits of the earth, his subsistence must be uncertain
and meagre; and only a small portion of the earth would be
inhabited. It is a law of his being that he must toil for his bread.
This toil, under those restrictions, which the healthful exercise of
every physical and intellectual function demands, is conducive to
animal and mental vigor and strength.

The Commerce of the country, for more than three-fourths of the
objects about which it is concerned, is dependant upon agriculture.
Manufactures are mainly concerned in the use and the preparation
for use of the products of agriculture. Our naval power and our
military defences.can only be maintained by these products. The
labor of such a country as ours must be almost entirely, directly or
indirectly, concerned in this great business. It is the source of
national wealth ; it involves the comforts, the happiness, and the
welfare of the whole people. It is the first step in the progress of
civilization. Its improvement and extension indicate the progress,
which civilization has made. In the shepherd and wandering
state, where tribes of men are under the necessity of continually
changing their position, or in the savage state, where men rely for
a precarious subsistence upon fishing or the chase, civilization never
can, under such circumstances, make any advancement. The
plough should be the first missionary to be sent among the heathen
nations. Until men are in some measure humanized and brought
into a fixed position, a condition of mutual dependence and advan-
tage implied by the knowledge and practice of agriculture,
Christianity is likely to have little hold upon their regard and affec-
tions.

It is not necessary to extend these general remarks. I might
speak of the favourable bearing of agriculture on public morals ;

7

and, in a free country, of its intimate connection with public
liberty. Upon that large portion of mankind, whose home is on
the sea, whose capital is easily transferable, or whose business or
profession may be pursued with equal advantage in various places,
the state has an imperfect hold. But, with respect to those of the
agricultural classes, who have a direct stake in the soil, whose
home is fixed, and who, separate from all pecuniary interests, are
tied down by innumerable associations to the place of their resi-
dence, the state has the strongest pledge of their attachment and
devotion.

The highest duty of every good government should be the pro-
tection and advancement of its agriculture. As that flourishes the
whole country flourishes ; as that declines the country must suffer
and decline. The commercial interests of the country constitute an
immense interest. Most persons familiar only with the business
and grandeur of cities are disposed to consider trade and commerce
as the greatest interests of the country. I am not inclined to under-
value these interests, especially in a city where they have been
pursued with so much intelligence and enterprise as they have in
this.

I am not indisposed to deny the immense advantages which they
render to Agriculture, and their intimate connection with the pros-
perity of the whole country. Compared with Agriculture, however,
they are a mere circumstance in that prosperity. In Great Britain,
the country of all others most distinguished for the extent and
wealth of its Commerce, singular as the fact may seen, the value of
the manure annually applied in the cultivation of its soil, exceeds
that of the whole amount of its foreign trade.* Without Agricul-
ture Commerce could not subsist ; but if the whole Commerce of the
country were to be at once extinguished the substantial welfare of
the people might remain untouched. If the whole country, with its
seventeen millions of inhabitants, and to that millions were added, were
thrown at once upon their own resources, and every inlet and outlet
closed up, there need be no want of the supplies and comforts of
life. The nation might still be advancing without slackening its
speed, in abundance, prosperity, and power.

Of all countries, to none is Agriculture more suited, no where
can it be more successfully prosecuted than in the United States.

* M’Queen’s Statistics of the British Empire.

8

With a climate extending through sixteen degrees of latitude in the
most favored zone, there is scarcely a vegetable, or fruit, or cereal
grain, which may not in some portion of it be successfully cultivated.
With an unmeasured extent of soils of unsurpassed fertility, every
product conducive to comfort, health and luxury, is, under the
blessing of Heaven, at the command of the cultivator. With land
to be had almost for the asking, and where a year’s labor will
purchase for any industrious man an ample farm; with a perfect
security, in the free states, of the fruits of one’s own industry ; with
an exemption from all burdensome taxation ; with markets as good
as any part of the world presents; with lines of intercommunica-
tion, rapid, easy, and certain, which abolish all distance and which
tend to equalize the advantages of the whole country ; and with a
government spreading its broad shield of protection over all, and
whose weight, like that of the element in which we live, no man
feels, unless he opposes it, and in the exemption from internal dis-
cord and foreign war, there is no example of a nation more favored.
The fact that every sober and industrious man may become a free-
holder of the soil, may have a home which he may call his own—
a word so fragrant and delicious to the heart—and by reasonable
toil and frugality, may rear, educate, and comfortably endow a
family, and this without. hindrance, or fear of oppression or autho-
rized robbery and pillage, we witness a privileged condition of
mankind, an encouragement to enterprise, labor and good conduct,
the counterpart to which has never been found. In other countries
the condition of labor has been a condition of restraint, servility,
and degradation. Let us thank God, that there exists in our country
no other rank than moral rank. . Here, without prejudicing his
neighbors interest, and where the success of any one brings equal
good to the community as to himself, every man, may aspire to the
highest attainments, which his ambition can ask. In the old coun-
tries discussions are continually going on which oppress the bene-
volent heart with shame and grief, as to the means by which popu-
lation shall be checked, early marriages discouraged and prevented,
and the condition of the poor rendered still more wretched by the
want of those domestic ties and affections, which are the sources of
the purest happiness and the most powerful security of virtue.
Centuries must elapse before such questions can have any interest
withus. Wehave morethan three hundred and fifty millions of acres

9

of public lands to be disposed of; and not a state in the Union has
reached a sixth part of the population, which it is capable of sus-
taining in abundance and luxury. When to this we add the in-
creased production, which must come from an enlightened and im-
proved Agriculture, even where Agriculture has been deemed among
us to be most enlightened and improved, we may give ourselves
little concern for a period so far distant in the coming future, as that
when our nation shall be crowded for room; when, under free in-
stitutions, those who labor shall want bread; and the birth of a
child be regarded as a curse to the state. Under an improved
Agriculture in Scotland, we are assured upon the best authority, the
crop of wheat within twelve years past, has doubled its produce upon
an acre, having risen in many cases under systems of permanent im-
provement, from twenty-four to fifty and even sixty bushels. A few
years since the average crop of wheat in Great Britain was rated at
eighteen bushels per acre, it is now stated on good authority to be
twenty-five bushels. The crop of Indian corn, in the best cultivated
districts of our own country, until within a few years, has not
averaged more than thirty bushels to the acre. I believe the time
is not distant when one hundred bushels per acre will cease to be
regarded as extraordinary.

I had intended to go into some statistical returns, by which the
magnitude of the agricultural interest of the country would be
exemplified. But I fear it would too severely tax your indulgence.
These statistics, too, are necessarily imperfect ; and it would avail
little to say, that the cotton crop of last year amounted to twenty-two
hundred thousand bales, averaging three hundred and fifty pounds
each, or in other words seven hundred and seventy millions of pounds ;
that the annual crop of sugar in Louisiana is seventy millions
of pounds; that the amount of tobacco actually consumed in the
country exclusive of exportation, exceeds one hundred millions of
pounds and amounts to twenty millions of dollars; that the value
of the annual shearing of wool is more than twenty-one millions of
dollars ; and that of the product of wheat, barley, corn, rye, and
other grains, no calculation has approached the actual amount.
The inquiries directed to be made by the Marshals in taking the
last census, if executed with even moderate care, will furnish the
most important information on these subjects.* The results ascer-

* See Appendix, Note A,

10

tained astound us by the long array of figures which represent them ;
but they are nothing compared with that mine of wealth which lies
buried at our feet, and which the plough is destined to uncover.
What a bountiful mother is this earth! What dutiful child has
sought her favors, on the only terms on which she ever should
grant them, that did not find her kindness unrestricted and ample!
In a country like ours, as yet comparatively new, and with a
vast extent of land just rescued from the wild beasts and wild men,
that roamed over it with undisputed sovereignty, it cannot be
expected that much improvement in agriculture should have been
made. The great object has necessarily been, in most cases, pro-
duction and immediate returns. Where immense tracts of land lay
untilled, men have used up the soil without regard to its improve-
ment, or the continuance of its fertility. Excepting in those soils,
which are annually overflowed and enriched from the contributions
of other fields, no soil under perpetual cultivation can retain its
fertility. This has already been demonstrated in some of the oldest
states, where cultivation has been highly stimulated, the products
carried from the land, and no portion of them returned for its
restoration and nourishment. In the new states likewise, the fer-
tility of whose soils to the confident and reckless seems ineshausti-
ble, this must ultimately be the case unless the principles of modern
husbandry the principles of a rotation of crops and seasonable
manuring be understood and adopted. The laws of nature can
neither be transcended nor violated with impunity. Avarice and
selfishness in every department of life are sure of a just retribution,
The laboring horse must have his full manger and his comfortable
bed ; or he will cease to labor. To exhaust the soil by cropping,
and to be continually taking away without any replenishing, is a
husbandry the fatal consequences of which are certain. In some
parts of the country the soil is exhausted with perfect recklessness
and with a determination on the part of the cultivator, that when it
ceases to yield abundantly, he will emigrate; but there are few
cases in which emigration is not a serious evil. If the account
were fairly made up and the disadvantages of removal contrasted
with the advantages of a fixed location, having all those multiplied
conveniences, comforts, and improvements, which are found asso-
ciated only with a long established residence, the policy of such
calculations would be as strongly condemned by interest as by con-

ii

siderations of comfort and moral good. The evils of removal and
emigration in our country, its physical sufferings, its social priva-
tions, and its moral trials, in a majority of cases, are necessarily
great ; and can be compensated only by extraordinary advantages.
It is happy for us that, under a faithful and enlightened agriculture,
the fertility of a soil may not only be kept up but continually
increased. It is a truth in which the old states have the deepest
interest, that their impoverished lands may in many cases be
restored and their waste and irreclaimed lands redeemed and made
productive with greater ultimate advantages and pecuniary profit
than a farm can be taken up and managed on the richest prairies
of the Far West. Let me state a case within my own knowledge.
In the neighborhood of two or three populous villages an observing
man purchased seventy acres of wet-meadow, the product of which
was comparatively worthless. The land was estimated at not more
than twenty dollars per acre. At an additional expense not exceed-
ing twenty dollars per acre he drained and manured it ; and obtains
from it at the rate of three tons of good hay to an acre, worth, at
the average price which hay has maintained in the vicinity for
twenty years past, fifteen dollars per ton. From one measured acre
he sold the product of one cutting for one hundred dollars, at twenty-
five dollars per ton.* We are yet, even in the old states, little ac-
quainted with our own resources. I have no prejudice against the
new states. Far from it. I admire their unrivalled magnificence,
their superlative beauty, and their exuberant fertility. They are for
the young and enterprising; for those, who have no means of
planting themselves in the old states ; or for those of foreign coun-
tries, who fleeing from the yoke of oppression and degradation
which has for centuries galled their necks under the despotisms of
the old world, come with their wives and children to our shores
where they may breathe the air of freedom and enjoy the rights of
men. Heaven prosper the virtuous, patriotic and industrious among
them, as he prospered our pilgrim fathers. But at the same time I
am for the improvement of the old states. I am for doing well
here, before I go further under the expectation of doing better, with
all the uncertainties attending a removal and the sacrifices, and the
privations which, under the best circumstances it must involve. We
have not yet begun a systematic and liberal course of improvement.

* See Appendix, Note B.

12

With respect to the small experiments which have been made, and
many have come under my observation, I have not found a single
instance conducted with judgment, skill, perseverance, and liberality,
which has not been amply compensatory and successful. Your own
county of Columbia presents many examples of such productive
improvement. Lands in this county, which twenty years ago were
scarcely worth twenty dollars, under a course of permanent im-
provement, are now readily sold at an hundred dollars per acre in
whole farms, and pay a large profit at that.

Next to the abundance and cheapness of land, the want of capital
to apply to the cultivation of land, has to a degree retarded the im-
provement of our Agriculture. This has not however been uni-
versally the case. The Southern portions of the country, under the
stimulus of a fictitious capital, and with the flattering allurements of
high prices and quick returns, have forced production to an extraor-
dinary extent. But this, as managed, has been an unnatural pro-
cess, which I shall not now discuss. In the Northern states, how-
ever, where capital has been more sound, yet, with all their charac-
teristic shrewdness, the Yankees have been exceedingly wary of
applying capital to the improvement of Agriculture. They have
been engaged in raising all kinds of stock but live stock. They
have been willing to risk their capital in every sort of bank but a
bank of earth, where alone the investments and discounts, if not
dazzling and extravagant, are sure and liberal. The alluring and
specious prospects of sudden accumulation, which at one time seem-
ed to have goaded the whole nation into frenzy, and the profligate
abuse of credit, that most powerful element in human affairs, so
productive and useful in its healthy operations, perverted all sober
calculations, and separated the accumulation of more from its proper
and only legitimate connexion, the improvement of what we have.
Of speculations in land we had enough; and in a corresponding
measure the cultivation of land seemed to have been checked. At
one time every man was willing to sell his farm. Many, in their
passion for a good bargain, seemed ready, after the Russian fashion,
to convey their wives and children as a part of the live stock of the
farm. The only harvest upon which they calculated in these cases
was to come from the pockets of the purchaser.

It is but recently, for example, that conventions were assembled,
the press teemed with encouraging publications, and everywhere

13

men’s mouths were full of the culture of silk. It was gravely cal-
culated that trees would not grow fast enough for the wants of the
community and that even our common farmers would be able to
change their tow-frocks for silken robes, made perhaps after the
fashion of the Roman toga. But it was soon found that all this
had its origin and its end in the price of multicaulis and the sale of
mulberry trees. The actual production of silk, destined, I confi-
dently believe, to become a most important and profitable branch of
American husbandry, did not enter into the calculations of most of
these persons. Their eloquent eulogiums upon its culture were for
another end. The reasonable gains of wholesome industry united
with systematic frugality were disdained under the dazzling expec-
tations of sudden accumulation. Men crowded around the moun-
tain, struggling up its ascent, and heedlessly thrusting down, if
necessary to their own success, all who stood in their way, as if its
glittering summits and its brilliant glaciers were of solid silver. The
terrible avalanche, which has rolled down, tumbling many from its
giddy heights and crushing thousands upon whom it fell, has taught
the country a lesson of rebuke and wisdom necessary to their pride,
and which, at least for a while, must calm the insanity of an
unbridled avarice and ambition. The season of mental and moral
disease through which the country has passed, and from the dreadful
effects of which it is now suffering, will prove a signal blessing if it
shall be instrumental in giving, especially to the rising generation,
more just views of duty, happiness, and good; if, in withdrawing
them from their hazardous and too often dishonest and corrupting
pursuits of gambling and speculation, it shall reconcile and attach
them to the pursuits of honest toil in cultivating the earth. Such a
pursuit is sure to bring with it, a reasonable competence and the
satisfactions of conscience, and at the same time present the widest
room for the cultivation of the domestic affections, and the quiet and
delicious pleasures of this true philosophy of life. I certainly would
not encourage any extravagant expectations; orrepresent agriculture
as likely, under the best circumstances, to yield enormous profits.
Expectations of that character are vain and baseless, when applied
to any of the business of life. Large fortunes are sometimes sud-
denly and unexpectedly made; but we must not be deluded by
extraordinary examples. In the lottery of life we are sure to hear
of the few who draw the highest prizes; but nothing is said of the

14

multitudes, who draw only blanks. I do not mean to compare
agriculture to the operations of chance. Trade partakes much
more of chance than agriculture. But I mean to say that the capi-
tal may often be invested in agricultural improvements so as to meet
all reasonable expectations of profit; and when the security of such
investments is considered, they will be justified by the soundest
discretion.

The various parts of the country are so diversified in climate, soil,
and condition that it is difficult to speak of American agriculture as
a whole. Ihave merely glanced at its productiveness. The amount
to which it has yet to rise, the most expansive imagination cannot
define. There is another remark to be made, which in its present
condition is applicable to no other country, which is that our coun-
try from within itself is capable of supplying everything, which the
earth can yield, essential to subsistence comfort and luxury. Its
various parts, diversified as they are in condition and production,
are all essential and helpful to each other. In their union there is
strength. In a kind intercourse and the free interchange of their
different products God grant that they may cultivate a spirit of
good will and mutual sympathy, and for years and centuries to come,
keep the chain which binds them together, bright and unbroken.

The great object of the enlightened and patriotic of our country
should be'the improvement of its agriculture. I have already said
that its agriculture is the great source of its wealth. What is
wealth? Without referring at all to the opinions of political
economists, I answer, it is that which is essential to the subsistence
and is conducive to the comfort of man’s being; such as shelter,
food, and clothing, or that by which these may be produced or
procured ; such as lands, houses, seeds, manures and tools, and
above all, labor, by which these are made productive of the neces-
saries and comforts of life. Money is not wealth. We have pretty
nearly settled this question, upon which, hitherto opinions have been
different from what they now are, or are soon likely to be again.

With the view of getting rich, we have tried pretty extensively
the domestic manufacture of money; and, after the production of
many pictured millions, it has left us poorer then when we began.
The Secretary of the Treasury in a late report has stated, that the
losses to the country within a few years by the failure of banks ; that
is, our money factories has exceeded four hundred millions of dollars,

15

This was before the great explosion, which has scattered such wide
spread ruin and brought so much dishonor upon the country. But
where has it gone? It has literally gone out; because it had no
substantial being. It pretended to represent that which did not
exist. It resembled the autumnal fogs, which gather in low places,
or on the banks of rivers, reflecting, as the streaks of light dart up
in the eastern horizon, numberless beautiful colors and waving forms,
and transforming the spreading valley into an inland sea. But, in a
few hours, it is scattered to the four winds, from whence none but the
hand of a mighty power can regather it. How would it have been
with us if the same amount, the product of industrious labor, had »
been represented by cotton, wool, rice, tobacco, flour, wheat, grain,
live stock, manufactured goods of prime necessity and innocent luxury,
or by manufacturing establishments, increasing under the application
of skill a hundred fold the value of the raw materials upon which
they operate ; or by improved and cultivated farms abounding in
all the substantial comforts of life and by healthful and enlightened
labor rendered continually more and more productive. This would
have been real wealth which the true philanthropist might have
contemplated with satisfaction; and to which the rough hand of
honest toil might have pointed with conscious pride. I dare not
bring into the contrast the unmixed misery cf disappointment and
bankruptcy with which this system has flooded the’ community,
the idleness, profligacy and corruption of morals, which it has
brought with it, the shock which it has given to commercial in-
tegrity; and the disgrace which it has inflicted upon national
character.

The government is bound to protect and encourage all honest
labor, for labor is its true capital; labor is the only legitimate in-
strument of wealth. Iam no enemy to banks founded upon the
only honest principle of banking, the certain ability to meet their
obligations promptly and according to their tenor. I am no enemy,
but the friend of credit given as the encouragement to honest en-
terprise and industry, and based upon a reasonable calculation of
the probable gains and results of such enterprise and industry. But
a currency which has no substantial basis to rest upon, and which,
in too many cases, represents only a conspiracy against industry for
the most selfish ends, and credit given for no other purpose, or
applied to no other ends than those of speculation, and without any

16

of those sufficient securities by which commercial honor in all
conditions of life should be protected, is among the worst species of
gambling; it is the corruption of public morals and robbing of
honest labor of its earnings. An individual purchases an acre of
land to-day at a hundred dollars, and having done nothing for its
improvement, on account of a redundancy of the currency, by which
the value of money is reduced, and which is expanded or contracted
at the pleasure or caprice of the money factors, sells this land a
month or a year afterwards, for two hundred dollars; does he confer
any benefit upon the community? Not the smallest, but most pro-
bably an injury. Is the actual value of the land increased, or the
community made richer by this advancement in price? Not at all.
But, on the other hand, if an individual takes an acre of land, cul-
tivates, and enriches it, renders it productive, and actually produces
a crop, he is the creator of wealth ; he is a benefactor to the com-
munity ; in respect to its wealth, not only in proportion to the value
of the crop he produces but in having put the land in condition for
future production; and greatly in respect to its morals—a gain
always vastly superior to any pecuniary profits.

Allow me, in this connexion, to direct your attention to what
may be called the recuperative power of Agriculture, as the creator
of wealth. Money has no power of self increase. Money in specie
deposited in your chest, if you can keep it safely, at the end of a
month or year will not have increased at all in value; if in bank
notes, though the lock of the chest may be unbroken, I cannot an-
swer for it that it will not have been diminished. Agriculture ap-
plied with skill and judgment in subduing, cultivating and enrich-
ing the soil, not only enhances its present value and obtains an
early return, but puts it into a condition of permanent productiveness
and increase. But, in these strong recommendations of an improved
agriculture and the increase of products, I shall be met with the
objection, that in proportion to the increase of agricultural products,
prices go down and their value is consequently diminished. My
answer in this case is, that in a healthful state of the currency of a
country, and where the standard of value is fixed and not liable to
perpetual fluctuations, cost and value naturally adjust themselves
and maintain a steady proportion. But I have a second answer.
I estimate the prosperity of a country not by a mere pecuniary
standard, but by the general comfort and improved condition of the

17

middling and the laboring classes. This comfort and improvement
of condition will be in proportion to the cheapness and abundance
of the necessaries of life. A productive and abundant Agriculture
must form, therefore, the great means of their comfort and pros-
perity.

The perfection of Agriculture as an art consists in its produc-
tiveness, qualified by the consideration of cost, and of the condition
in which it places or leaves the soil. If the proceeds of the culti-
vation are not sufficient fairly to meet the expenses, it becomes dis-
couraging ; and may, with good reason, be abandoned. If in
prosecuting it, the first returns repay the expenditures yet the soil
itself becomes impoverished and cannot be recruited but at an ex-
pense exceeding the value of the crop obtained, this husbandry is
not to be commended. But when the land yields abundantly, the
crops not only pay the expenses of cultivation, but leave a net
profit, and the land itself is in a course of gradual improvement and
increased productiveness, such husbandry may be pronounced
skillful and successful. The same remarks, which apply in this case
to the cultivation of fhe land, apply in like manner to the raising
and keeping of live stock and every other department of husbandry.

The improvement of this art depends upon inquiry and knowledge,
exactly as the improvement of any other art or science. It has
been thought that practice was the only means, and all that was
necessary, to constitute a man a farmer; and scientific inquiry has
been spoken of with derision. This ignorance and these prejudices
are fast passmg away. There are secrets in nature, which in the
present condition of our faculties we may not expect to penetrate ;
but in the progress of knowledge it has already happened, as we
all know, that many operations of nature, which were deemed a few
years since insoluble mysteries, are now made so familiar that
we can only admire our own previous dullness of comprehension.
More than this, too, in this case the Gordian knot has not been cut,
but deliberately untied. Inquisitive minds should never be satisfied
with present attainments, nor think they have gone far enough, when
there is a possibility of going further. Nothing is more remarka-
ble, when the subject is soberly considered, than the prejudice
which has existed against science when applied to Agriculture. It
is strange that men should admit the value of mind and of know-
ledge in every other department of business but this. Why

3

18

should Agriculture, involving many of the most profound inquiries,
be an exception to the aids and advantages of science ? » When we
consider what art and science has already done for it, we cannot
doubt that philosophy is yet here to extend her guiding hand, and
to achieve many a splendid triumph. The progress of some of the
natural sciences within a few years has been so great that they may
almost be said to have been created. The Supreme Being has im-
planted in the mind a strong desire after truth. It is the charac-
teristic of a distinguished intellect to yearn after it as the stomach,
famishing with hunger, pants for food. To seek after truth, there-
fore, wherever we can find it, whether we go into the field as
gatherers of the bending harvest, or as gleaners of a few scattered
ears, is a duty to ourselves, and an act of reverence to the Father
of our Spirits. He has made truth the natural aliment of the soul,
and inspired the noble minded with a thirst for it, which ever gains
new ardor from indulgence. Of what is termed the vital processes
in the animal and the vegetable worlds, we cannot form even a
plausible conjecture; but this should not discourage our inquiries.
Before the discoveries of Harvey, the circulation of the blood was
an unfathomable mystery, and before the revelations of Franklin
in electrical science the world did not dream of the nature and laws
of that mighty ethereal fluid.

Vegetable physiology, and organic chemistry, have been within
a few years so much studied, soils and manures have been so care-
fully analyzed, and their applications so frequently experimented
upon and so carefully watched, that many principles, most impor-
tant in their application to practical Agriculture, are as well
established as the principles of astronomy and navigation, which
enable the intrepid sailor to circumnavigate the globe, and to deter-
mine his place and distance and course with entire precision, as
well by the soft beams of the sparkling stars, transmitted from the
profound depths of the heavens, as by the effulgence of a noon-day sun.

One of the most distinguished botanists and vegetable physiolo-
gists* in the world, by establishing the fact of the exudation of
plants and the excretion from their roots of matter unfriendly to
the successive growth of the same plant on the same land, has ex-
plained the importance and necessity of a rotation of crops.
Another individual,t standing in the foremost rank among the

* De Candolle. Wiis Liebig.

19

learned men of Europe, has given such explanations of the soils,
the operation of manures, and the remarkable dependance of plants
for their food upon the atmosphere and the rain, that should his
theories be established by farther experiments, his book, as it has
already been pronounced, will prove a new revelation in Agricul-
ture. A distinguished scientific and practical agriculturist* in
Great Britain, in view of what has been done and is doing, with all
the enthusiasm of an ancient Greek philosopher, declares that
“ everything portends some extraordinary discoveries in Agriculture.”
May it be the happiness of this gentleman, himself an eminent,
active and liberal friend of agricultural improvement, to be favored,
like the ancient patriarch before his departure, with a sight of the
glowing objects of his desires and hopes.

American Agriculture starts in the race of improvement in. the
enjoyment of singular advantages, having the benefit of all the im-
provements and discoveries of the philosophers and practical agri-
culturists of the old world. The Agriculture of Europe differs from
that of this country on account of differences of climate and soils,
and by various circumstances in the social condition, character and
wants of the people. But the great principles of vegetation and
cultivation are every where the same. Their remarkable improve-
ments in ,the redemption of unproductive, waste and wet-soils, in
the irrigation of lands, in draining and sub-soil ploughing, in the
composting and compounding of manures, in the use of mineral
manures, and more especially in the improvement of their live stock,
amounting almost to the creation of new races of cattle, sheep, and
swine, will not only stimulate our exertions, but serve as examples
for our guidance under the qualifications, which the peculiarities of
our situation require.

The French and Germans, if their progress has not been as great
as that of Great Britain, are now advancing, in a course of improve-
ment in Agriculture with an equal step. In the application of
Chemistry to Agriculture, in comparative anatomy and botany, in
exact experiments, in the institution of model farms, where the most
important agricultural experiments are carefully going on under
the supervision of some of the most enlightened men of the age and
at the expense of the state, and in efforts and provisions to create
an interest in the art and to extend any information, which is
acquired ; and especially, by a systematic arrangement and organi-

* P. Pusey, M. P.

20

zation throughout the kingdom, by which agricultural information
is collected from every source, and again sent out through the
arteries into every part of the political body, the French nation is
at this time in advance of all others.

American Agriculture though comparatively in its infancy, having
always had to struggle with the difficulties of no capital and high
prices of labor, may nevertheless regard itself with a good deal of
satisfaction. The earliest publication on American Agriculture was
made in 1760; and Eliot’s Essays on Field Husbandry will be
read with interest and instruction for ages to come. Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, and New York early established agricultural societies,
offered liberal premiums for successful experiments in agriculture,
and held cattle shows and ploughing matches, which have awakened
a strong interest and created a most salutary competition. These
three states, in the reports and memoirs of their agricultural
societies, have given to the public more than twenty three volumes of
instructive and useful matter. Deane, Lowell and Pickering in
Massachusetts, Livingston, L. Hommidieu and Hosack in New York,
Peters, Mease, Lorain and Powell in Pennsylvania, Stiles and
Humphreys in Connecticut are names which are destined, without
prejudice to any of their distinguished contemporaries or successors, to
occupy the highest niches of honor in the records of American
Agriculture.

It would not be just to pass in silence, the early pioneers in agri-
cultural improvement connected with the periodical press, Skinner,
and the distinguished and lamented Fessenden and Buel, to whom
the country owes a heavy debt of gratitude and honor for their
intelligence, public spirit and usefulness. The agricultural press
among us is singularly active, illuminating the whole national
horizon with its brilliant coruscations; or rather, should I not say,
its steady, condensed and glowing light. The Albany Cultivator
under its late lamented editor and a successor equally worthy, the
Farmer’s Register in Virginia, and the New Hampshire Visitor,
without disparagement to the singular ability with which many
other lights are kept burning, would do honor to any country.

The geological and other scientific surveys which have been con-
ducted with much learning and ability in Massachusetts, Maine,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Indiana, and Michigan,
. and still in progress in New York; New Hampshire and

21

Virginia, have developed a large amount of information, the practical
bearing of which upon Agriculture must prove extremely beneficial.
Massachusetts has the honor of having first instituted an agricultural
survey. Notwithstanding the difficulties of an undertaking al-
together novel and undefined, and of proceeding single-handed in
an enterprise so arduous, without experience, or counsel or aid, my
convictions of the utility of the undertaking have been strengthened
by its prosecution. While I have had the highest satisfaction in the
repeated expressions of approbation from gentlemen both in this
country and abroad, whose good opinion is above all price, I trust
I shall be pardoned for adding that the course of inquiries instituted
and the prosecution of those inquiries with the publication of their
results have given in the state animpulse to agricultural inquiry and
improvement and an exactness to agricultural experiment and
observation which have been and must continue to be productive of
the best effects. 7

The Agriculture of the country has been singularly benefitted by
the public-spirited introduction of the best live stock from Europe.
Col. Humphreys of Connecticut and Chancellor Livingston of New
York made the first importation of Merino sheep into the country as
early as 1802. Messrs. George and Thomas Searle of Boston brought
the Saxony into the country in the year 1824. Other gentlemen
followed in similar importations, and when the destined extent of
this interest is considered, it is difficult to say how they could have
conferred a greater benefaction upon the country. Besides the
distinguished importations of improved neat stock in Ohio and
Kentucky by companies, many private gentlemen of fortune have,
with a commendable public spirit, embarked in the importation of
the finest live stock, both cattle and sheep, which Europe affords.
Van Rensellaer and Corning of New York, Powell of Pennsylvania
and Cushing of Massachusetts have in this way conferred most
eminent benefactions upon the country. The latter gentlemen,
with a liberality as distinguished as his mercantile success and
honor, hasnot only imported the best stock, but gratuitously distributed
them among the farmers. This generous appropriation of large
amounts for purposes of agricultural improvement in the most dis-
interested manner silence all envy of his splendid fortune; and
entitle him to the high honor and respect with which his fellow
citizens regard him. Among individuals of more humble means but

22

of a spirit of improvement worthy of the largest fortune, Bement of
New York, Townsend of Connecticut and Jaques of Massachusetts
deserve the most honorable mention. The latter gentleman has just
claims to the honor of the first systematic attempt in the country at
forming a dairy stock of the most valuable properties. I might cite
other honored names, who have united their liberal contributions to
these public-spirited enterprises ; and I refer with singular pleasure
to Henry L. Ellsworth, Commissioner of Patents, who, in his zeal
to promote an improved Agriculture, has collected and distributed
large amounts of valuable seeds through the states ; and commenced
the establishment of an agricultural museum at the seat of govern-
ment upon a plan of the highest utility to the country.

These and various other circumstances, which the time does not
permit me to refer to, give strong encouragement to the friends of
an improved Agriculture. Happy for us that in this matter we can
unite without distinction of political party or religious sect ; and in
a case where all rivalry and competition are excluded, excepting
that which may be pursued with perfect good will to all; and which
must result in the common benefit.

The dependance of Agriculture upon the mechanic arts is obvious
to every one ; and mechanical genius in our own country has already
made many liberal contributions. The Cotton Gin of Whitney,
when its great results are considered, is the most important and
valuable instrument ever produced in the agricultural world. |The
cultivation of cotton in the country began in 1787 and in 1792 it is
said the whole amount exported was two bags received at New
York from Savannah. The cotton gin, by which one man performs
the work which before required a thousand, gave an impulse and
facility to the production of this valuable article by which it has
risen to its present enormous amount. New York may claim the
honor of having given the first cast-iron mould board plough to the
country, by which a saving is made of full fifty per cent in the
power of draught required, and great advantages gained in the
facility with which repairs can be made. Wood’s plough is still
deservedly valued through the country. The improvements made
on its construction, by Minor in your own state, by Howard, Prouty
and Mears, Ruggles, Nourse and Mason, and others in Massachusetts
and other parts of the country, have carried it to a high degree of
perfection. The capital plough of Davis of Maryland, now rarely

23

to be seen, for ease of draught and excellence of work for old fields,
is within my knowledge unsurpassed. In comparison of our own
with the best Scotch and English ploughs, which I have seen in
this country, though I have found nothing which equals the mould
board of Small, constructed as it is upon the most philosophical
principles, for the ease with which it enters and inverts the sward,
yet, in the hands of a good ploughman, the work done by our ploughs
is as good as any, and the facility with which they are managed
incomparably greater than the Scotch ploughs. In skill in plough-
ing and neatness and precision in executing the work, we are at
present very far behind the English and Scotch. The advantages
of a division of labor, as where a ploughman is always a plough-
man, and the extraordinary expertness and exactness acquired by
early training and the concentration of the faculties and ambition
to a single point, are here most obvious. For threshing we have
many admirable machines, and in comparison with a Scotch machine
which I have seen, said to have been constructed after the best
model, in amount of work which they will perform in a given time
several of ours are not inferior ; and in the power required for its
execution, the expense of the instrument, and the facility of its
transportation from place to place, ours have greatly the advantage.

This may not be an unsuitable place to refer to a beautiful con-
trivance in rural economy presented at your annual exhibition by
one of your associates, in the construction of a bee hive. The
hive of John Sholl of this city combines superior advantages at a
small expense. By the uniform temperature it is intended to pre-
serve in the hive in summer and winter it provides effectually for
the health of the colony. It obviates to a degree the necessity of
swarming and allows the young to remain at home with the old
folks. It is in a great measure secure against the attacks of that
too often fatal enemy the bee-moth; andis easy, withal, of transporta-
tion, with its tenants enclosed, to any distance. It allows you to
take the surplus honey in the purest state for your taste; and
abandons the savage system, so many years practised against these
industrious laborers, of piracy and murder. It would seem in this
case to have other advantages in respect to these exemplary insects,
since, as if acquiescing in the non-resistant principles of the sect,
to which the ingenious inventor belongs, the bees permit him to
handle them and go among them with perfect impunity.

24

This invention and the excellent hive of Weeks of Vermont and
other valuable ones for a similar purpose in other states, will have
some importance in your regard, when I state the fact, that a farmer
in Maine the last year, from his honey and hives and swarms is said
to have realized no less than a thousand dollars.

We have various other agricultual machines well adapted to our
purposes. Having the advantages of the improvements of other
countries in their best models, the ingenuity of our mechanics will
soon enable them to meet the demands of the community. Indeed
the progress already made in the mechanic arts among us, as is
seen at your own splendid exhibitions, encourage the promise of
distinguished benefits yet to result to Agriculture from their aid.

To these circumstances we may add others, which are ominous of
eminent good. Hitherto, to a considerable degree, agricultural labor
and pursuits have been regarded as servile and degrading ; or, from
the small gains which they are supposed to offer, have been con-
temned and abandoned for the glittermg accumulations which
presented themselves in other departments of business, and especially
in trade and commerce. It will be seen likewise upon observation
that most of our legislators and public men in many parts of the
country, almost to the exclusion of the agricultural class, have been
selected from the profession of the law, which has thus got to be
considered the turnpike road to political preferment. This is not
perhaps extraordinary ; for the legal profession being the principal
talking profession, and a large portion of our legislative business,
as at present conducted, consisting of mere talk, it is natural that
they should be preferred for this object. Agriculture has therefore
presented no lures to political ambition. At the same time I should
be doing the greatest injustice to all the learned professions, if I did
not say that, both in the legislature and out of it among the enlight-
ened men of these professions, Agriculture has found some of its
most able advocates and best practical examples. This has de-
monstrated the advantages of intelligence and science when applied
to this art, since in such hands, when united as it frequently
happens with a strong passion for rural pleasures and pursuits, the
art has invariably been found in its most improved condition.

In various respects public opinion, that mighty despot of human
life and manners, is evidently undergoing a healthful change.
Labor, actual personal labor, is becoming respectable. When a

25

few more of the light-fingered gentry of Europe, who have sped
their way to our shores, and others of the same class among our-
selves, who through greater modesty commit their robberies on the
industrious classes under at least the cover of legal forms, not less
robbery however for being thus protected, find their proper level in
society, labor, honest useful labor, whether of body or mind will
come to be duly honored. That labor, by which a man benefits not
only himself but the community, if proper intelligence be joined
with it, will be regarded as giving the strongest claims to its honors,
privileges, and blessings. The history of the trading community,
likewise, for the last few years, with its fluctuations, losses, derange-
ments and bankruptcies, with its sudden accumulations and sudden
and dreadful reverses, creates a reasonable distrust, whether the
actual gains of trade with their various risks, uncertainties and tempta-
tions are to be preferred to, whether in fact they are so great, as
the gradual but certain and honest gains of an improved agri-
culture. The charming and serene quiet of a house where books
and work and healthful play divide the hours, where no changes of
foreign markets, nor rise and falling of fancy stocks, nor bank con-
tractions and expansions, nor notes payable and discounts curtailed,
disturb the sleep, and chances of bargains and opportunities of
overreaching do not trouble the conscience nor betray the integrity,
is at least some compensation for daily toil and homely habitations.
The hard bed may bring with it a sweeter repose than a couch of
down ; and even the pine torch of a log-cabin may often shed a
more cheerful light upon its unambitious inmates than the astral
lamps and the burnished mirrors, glittering with the concentrated
rays of the purest gas-lights upon the ephemereal butterflies and
birds of paradise of many a city palace. As to political ambition,
I cannot desire that rural life should be corrupted by its presence ;
yet I think the time is not distant, when, if the farmers are true to
their own minds, the agricultural estate will, as in our mother
country, have its full share of political influence. The public will
feel that their national and social interests may be as safely trusted
to intelligent men, who have every thing at stake in the soil, who
know the value of labor as an element of national wealth and
happiness, and whose profession obliges them to habits of reflection
and caution, as to so large a proportion of other descriptions of
men, who hang more loosely on the state, whether taken from the
3

26

legal bar ; or, as it sometimes unfortunately happens, from the bar
of justice and the bar room. Public opinion, as I have said, pro-
mises to give to the agricultural profession its proper place. We
do not desire its elevation to the disparagement of any other honest
calling, for there are innumerable callings as honest and as useful ;
but, that the agricultural profession may be so regarded that the
young, if not allured to it by its substantial attractions, may at least
not be repelled from it by any false pride; by any fear of losing
caste ; and any want of that self-respect and that spirit of personal
independence, which belongs only and always, to such men in any
condition of life, as are the makers of their own fortunes, and get
their living by the faithful and upright use of the faculties of body
or of mind, with which their Creator has endowed them.

The agricultural interest has a just claim upon the fostering
and protecting care of the government. I am not able to discover
how the economy of a government differs in any respect from the
economy of a well-ordered family. The highest rule in domestic
economy, is for a family as far as possible, to supply from within
itself its own wants; and suffer itself to be as little as possible de-
pendent upon others. Debt and dependence are in most cases only
other names for slavery ; a slavery oftentimes more painful and de-
grading than African servitude. There is no element of character
more ennobling in itself or more conducive to virtue and to the pro-
gressive development and exertion of all the faculties of a human
being, than a conviction of his own capacity to provide for himself.
There is no domestic harmony more beautiful or less likely to be
disturbed, than where in a united family labor is divided, and the
different parties are engaged in supplying the various wants of each
other. While they cultivate a spirit of good will towards their
neighbors, they have no dread of their neighbor’s displeasure lest he
might abridge their comforts ; and no cringing and servile depen-
dance upon his power and caprice in the supply of their wants.
This system of internal supply, if I may so denominate it, consti-
tutes in most respects the best system of domestic education. Educa-
tion, in the highest sense. is not so much the acquisition of know-
ledge as teaching and preparing the mind, and stimulating and de-
veloping its capacities to acquire knowledge for itself. In a family
where the great duty taught is self reliance, every power is called
into action and an expertness is acquired in the use of our facul-

27

ties, which oftentimes surprises ourselves from the facility with
which they operate, and the diversity and usefulness of their results.

I know that it is the tendency of all men to push their theories
to an extreme; admitting the qualifications which this may suggest,
I proceed to say that political economy does not essentially differ
from domestic economy ; and a nation should make itself indepen-
dent by providing within itself for its own wants. That nation is
rich, which has no favors to ask of others. That nation, in a moral
view, is signally favored, whose industry is protected and stimulated
in every useful form for the common benefit. She creates within
herself continually new and new power and is ever advancing in
dignity, in wealth, and in all the elements, which constitute true
national greatness and glory. It may happen that the actual cost
or expense of supplying our own wants from our own resources
may in some things be greater than to purchase the same surplies
from others. But neither is national prosperity nor family pros-
perity to be measured by a merely pecuniary standard ; but by its
own internal and independent resources and abilities for the supply
of its own wants, comforts and luxuries. The governmeat is bound,
therefore, upon every principle of wise and sound policy, to foster
the national industry, agricultural and mechanical, in every form in
which it is directed to a good and useful end.

Of the various special means within its power to encourage its
agricultural industry and improvement, I have ne¢ time to speak
and do even the shadow of justice to the sukect. It is singular
that this great interest is not made an object of the special care of
the government, and that there is no cowstant or particular provi-
sion for its improvement and success. The first object of the
government should be to collect 2ad diffuse exact and full informa-
tion in relation to it, and for that reason a department of Agricul-
ture should be specially maintained at the seat of government,
whose object should be to promote its interests, and with liberal
appropriations to assist its inquiries. A similar department should
exist in every state. The actual condition of its Agriculture should
be, from time to time, ascertained by authority and spread before
the public. The Commissioner of Patents, has made an excellent
beginning in this matter ; and his public spirited enterprise should be
seconded in every part of the country. The collection of agricul-
tural information, correspondence at home and abroad, so as to take
advantage of every discovery and improvement, the obtaining of

28

seeds and plants of a rare or improved character and their distribu-
tion, and the collection of models of useful machines, tools and in-
ventions for facilitating agricultural labor, with an infinite variety
of other matters pertaining to the subject, would constitute an ex~
tensive business and prove eminently useful.

It has been suggested that a National Agricultural Society should
be formed, which should hold annual meetings for discussing this
great subject and for the other usual purposes of such associations.
But our country is too large for this. It spreads over too wide a
territory to expect ever that such meetings should be generally at-
tended. If anything of this kind were attempted it would be more
expedient to divide the country into four great agricultural districts
with an association in each, which would be likely to operate with
effect. It is doubtful, however, whether any associations so exten-
Sive could be managed to advantage. I have the most decided con-
victions, founded upon long experience and observation, of the value
of state associations for agricultural objects, and for the purpose of
holding annual cattle shows or fairs; and especially when these
societies ate endowed, as they most certainly should be, by the
liberality of the state with the means of bestowing respectable pre-
miums On suceessful discoveries, experiments and improvements.
Town associations should be formed with libraries of agricultural
publications, for discussion and reading ;- and in no state should the
friends of an imp:oved agriculture cease their exertions and impor-
tunities until state aad county societies are instituted and liberally
endowed with the means of bestowing substantial honors on the de-
serving. The State of Messachusetts for several years has appro-
priated from five to eight thousand dollars for the direct encourage-
ment of its Agriculture. This, a&er all, is a mere pittance ; but it
has been of immense advantage. Never has seed been sown that
has yielded or promises to yield a more abundant or more profitable
crop. The States of New York and Pennsylvania could afford to
give their ten, and their fifty thousands to these objects, and this
would be abundantly returned to them.

Your own magnificent state, Citizens of New York, ought to
take the lead in this noble enterprise. Your agriculture is one of
the great interests of the country and must continue so as long as
your extraordinary natural advantages and internal improvements
continue, and extend themselves.

The Institution, which I have the honor to address, has for its

29

objects the encouragement of agricultural and mechanical industry.
Your exhibitions and trials of ploughs have done you great honor.
Their continuance will quicken throughout the country the impulses
of genius and art; diffuse useful knowledge to a wide extent ;
awaken powers of usefulness which would otherwise lie dormant ;
and be of pre-eminent service to to your state and country. I.
know no institution adapted to more useful ends or more deserving
the encouragement of the enlightened and patriotic. The central
position in which it is established, rendering it accessible to all
parts of the country, and holding as it does an immediate and easy
commerce with the old world, and necessarily concentrating a large
amount of talent of a practical as well as of an intellectual charac-
ter, give your institution permanent advantages over any other
position in the Union. :

In France the government of the country has instituted several
agricultural schools, or schools of useful and practical arts and
sciences, and established model farms. I hope our state and national
governments will from their example perceive the immense import-
ance of these institutions. I see as much reason for the establish-
ment of national agricultural schools and schools of the practical
arts as for the establishment of national military and naval schools ;
and we may congratulate the friends of practical education, that
through the extraordinary liberality of a distinguished foreigner,
the government have already ample unused funds for education,
which cannot be better appropriated than to these objects.

The interest which I feel in this subject is so strong that, had I
the powers of an unrivalled eloquence, they should be used in urg-
ing the elevation of the rural and laboring classes. This is only to
be done by education, intellectual, moral education. This is the
Archimedean lever, which is to raise the world.

The importance of science to the improvement of Agriculture is
so great that on this account, we should seek to educate the rural
classes. But on their own account also, that we may refine and
elevate their taste; that we may increase the attractions of their
homes, and strengthen their attachments to their country ; that we
may give them resources for pleasure and mental improvement in
hours and days of leisure and in the evening of advanced age ; that
we may multiply the incentives to good morals by increasing their
self-respect and advancing their occupation and condition to its
proper dignity, we should seek to extend and continually to increase

30

among them the advantages of education. Nothing can more
effectually contribute to this than the establishment of that system
of free schools already existing in ‘your own state and in New
England; and by seeking constantly to elevate the character and
enlarge the course of studies at these institutions. The patronage
.of the government, if in this respect, it were a hundred or a thou-
sand fold greater than it is, could not be more wisely bestowed.
Gentlemen of the American Institute. Honored as I have been
by your invitation to address you, I feel myself even more obliged
by your indulgence on this occasion. I have very imperfectly met
my own wishes; and I can have little expectation therefore that I
have answered yours. The subject is far too extensive for such a
discussion as this evening allows. But I cannot quit the occasion
without congratulating you upon the prospects of our privileged
country in all that is truly valuable in the social condition of man-
kind. In the conditions of society in the old world, among those
who call themselves civilized, men are as much divided into castes
as in the servile provinces of Hindostan. The doom of the
laboring classes is fixed and they cannot rise above it, but as they
escape from their country. In our blessed country men are what
they make themselves by their talents, education, and morals. Let
us guard this beautiful element in our social condition, seen first
and only in American society, as the great security of freedom and
the certain spring and foundation of virtue and happiness. Men
must be thrown upon their own resources that their talents
may be brought out, and have an open field for their use and de-
velopment They must feel their personal responsibility to themselves
and to society in order to feel themselves men. In the hands of
men thus trained liberty will always be safe. In crowded cities,
breathless in the accumulation of mere wealth as the great end of
life, liberty may often be bartered for a mess of pottage, or perish
in the lap of sensual indulgence. Amid political strifes and the
struggles of ambition it may become a stifled victim in the clutches
of party. The enlightened and virtuous yeomanry of the country,
alike removed from the enervating fever of unbridled avarice and
sensuality, and the violent contests of political ambition, will guard
the sacred fire in its warmth and brightness. They will hold it
dear as their lives, because with them it involves all that is worth
living for; and transmit it unexhausted and undimmed to those,
who come after them.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A.
AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.

The publication of the returns of the census of the United States is looked for
with great interest. In the mean time I avail myself of some notices on this subject,
which have appeared since the delivery of the Address, in the public press. Mistakes
in copying large numbers are so easily made, that we cannot look at the returns in
this case, without a degree of distrust. That the State of New York, for example,
should produce seventy millions pounds of maple sugar is a very surprising fact, not
absolutely incredibie but requiring to be well authenticated in order to be received.
In the table in the Cultivator for May however it is put down at ten millions. 1
shall give both tables persuaded that imagination or carelessness may have had some-
thing to do in both.

“The largest wheat growing state in the union is Ohio, the amount 16,000,000
bushels; the next largest Pennsylvania with 13,000,000; the next New York with
11,000,000 ; and the fourth Virginia with 10,000,000. The largest amount of Indian
corn raised in one state is in Tennessee, 42,000,000 of bushels; Virginia 34,000,000;
Ohio 33,000,000; Indiana 28,000,000; Illinois 22,000,000; Alabama 18,000,000;
Georgia 17,000,000; Missouri 15,000,000.

New York is the greatest potatoe growing state, amount 30,999,000 bushels;
Maine next with 10,000,000; Pennsylvania 8,000,000.

The greatest cotton growing states are Mississippi 289,000,000 pounds; Ala-
bama 240,000,000 ; Georgia 148,000,000; South Carolina 134,000,000; Tennessee
128,000,000 ; Louisiana 87,000,000, Arkansas 23,000,000; Virginia 10,000,000.

Louisiana is of course the largest producer of sugar 249,000,000 pounds; New
York comes next with 70,000,000 pounds, the produce of our own forests.

Tennessee is first in swine, number 2,795,000. Ohio next with 2,000,000.

New York stands first for wool ; next Ohio, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Tennessee again stands first in tobacco, amount, 26,000,000 pounds; Maryland
18,000,000: Virginia 14,000,000. The returns from Kentucky not obtained.

New York stands first for lumber, value $3,788,000; next Maine $1,808,000.
For products of the orchard, New York stands first, value $1,732,000. For pro-

ducts of the dairy, New York is again at the head, value $10,000,000; Vermont
next $4,892,000.

APPENDIX.

AGRICULTURAL CENSUS OF NEW YORK,
From the Cultivator.

Horses and Mules,

Neat Cattle, —
Sheep, - - - -
Swine, - - -

Poultry of all kinds, estima-
tedvalue, - = -

Bushels of Wheat, - 2
‘ie Barley, - -

id Oats, - -

“ Rye, m z

'g Buckwheat, -

“4 Indian Corn, -
Pounds of Wool, - .
3 Hops, =". =

4 Wax, - :
Bushels of Potatoes, - = -
Pounds of Tobacco gather’d
AGRICULTURAL

Acres of tillage land, includ-
ing orchards tilled, -
Bushels of Wheat, - = -
“a Rye, a Es *
Oats, - - .
as Indian Corn, -
“a Barley, - -
Pounds of Hops, -— -
Tons of Hemp,- ruse
RE, . im - -
«Broom Corn, -
Acres of English and ya
mowing, -
Tons of Hay, yearly produce
of the same, -
Acres of fresh meadow, -
Tons of Hay, yearly ai
of the same, -
Acres of salt marsh, - -
Tons of Hay, yearly pragince
of the same, -
Acres of pasturage including
orchards pastured, = -
Cows, the same will keep
with the after feed of
the farm, 204see,, eee (8

476,115
2,202,128
5,381,225
1,916,954

$2,372,029
11,852,507
2,498,170
20,728,738
2.984.913
2.244.438
10,0%5,142
14,093,134
362,752
184,021
30,000,508
6,567

Tonsof Hay, - - - 3, 7 7
Pounds of Cocoons, - - 103

ae Sugar, - - 10, 09 ‘991
Cords of Wood sold, - - 1,085,048
Value of the produce of the

Dairy - 10,497,032
Value “nd produce. of Orchard 1,722,357
Gallons of Wine made, 14,710
Vulue of home made or fa-

mily goods, . $16,335,073
Value of Nurseries and Flo-

rists, - - - 75,500
Value of produce of market

garden, - - - 465,308
Number of persons employ-

ed, - - - - 525
Capital invested, - , $258,608

STATISTICS OF MASSACHUSETTS,
As Reported to the Valuation Committee, 1840.

Acres of woodland exelusive

259,0384 of pasture land enclosed,- 729,792
101,178 | Acres of unimproved Jand,- 955,2834
453,7053 “ Jandunimprovable, 360,2784
1,226,300 « _Jand used for roads, 90,074
4,775,7034 “land covered with :
149,004 water, - - - 157,524
237,941 | Whole quantity of land re-
7 turned, acres, - - 4,491,8124
2 | Horses one year old aut i
5804 ward, - 60,030
Mules and Asses one year
440,930 oldand upward, -—— - 117
Oxen four year old and or
467 ,5374 ward, - - 46,584
184,8224 | Cows three year old and wp-
ward, - 143,592
135,930} | Steers and heifers one year
13054 old and upward,- - — 88,562
Sheep six months old and
26,2024 upward, - - 843,390
Swine six months old and
1,210,154 upward, - - + 90,385
Amount of real estate oe
ed, erie 73,378,837
263,560 Amount of personal estate
doomed, - - 43;861,305
NOTE B.

The Newark Advertiser says that fifteen years ago, a farm in Western New York
of 400 acres, exhausted by bad husbandry, was bought by a Scotch farmer for
$4,000. This farm has been so improved by good busbandry, that the owner was
last year offered for it $40,000. He refused the offer on the ground that it had

actually netted him $60,000.

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