AN
AD —D RESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THIE
BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY,
ON OCCASION OF THEIR
ANNUAL CATTLE SHOW AND FAIR AT TAUNTON,
OCT.- 15, 1852.
BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP.
BOSTON:
PRINTED  BY JOHN WILSON & SON,
22, SCHOOL STREET.
1853.








AN
A ID D R E S S
I)ELIVEtED BEFORE THE
BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY,
ON OCCASION OF THEIR
ANNUAL CATTLE SHOW AND FAIR AT TAUNTON,
OCT. 15, 1852.
BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP.
BOSTON:
PRINTED BY JOHIN WILSON & SON,
22, SCHOOL STRIEET.
1853.




At a meeting of the BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, Oct. 15, 1852,
it was unanimously -
Voted, That the thanks of this Society be presented to HIon. Robert C. Winthrop
for his eloquent and instructive address, and that Mr. Winthrop be invited to furnish
a copy for the press.




ADD RE  S.
I AM not insensible, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the
Bristol County Agricultural Society, how adventurous a
thing it is for one who has had so little personal acquaintance with agriculture as myself —for one who was born
and brought up in a city of paved streets, in which it is our
special boast that not a blade of grass is ever permitted to
grow —to undertake a formal address to a society of practical farmers.
There are those within hearing who know, however, —
and none better than yourself, sir,-that I am no volunteer
on this occasion and in this service; that I am not here
with any presumptuous proffer of information or instruction, either to practical or to theoretical farmers; but that
I have come in simple deference to the repeated solicitations of friends, and because I have never learned that great
art which the fairer portion of my audience understand
how to prize and how to practise, when teased by the importunity of admiring suitors, — the art of saying no!
Seriously, my friends, I am here with a deep sense of my
own insufficiency for these things, and. with a full consciousness that there are hundreds around me to whom I
might far better offer myself as a scholar, than as a teacher,
upon any subject connected with the cultivation of the soil.
1




2
And yet, being here, and the responsibility for my presence
being thus fairly rested upon other shoulders, I do not intend to shrink from the legitimate service of the occasion.
Having once put my hand to the plough, I am not disposed
"to look back," but shall proceed to break up such a furrow
as I can, - to turn over as large a slice as I am able, - in
some corner or other of the wide field of agricultural discussion. Before entering, however, upon the graver topics
of the day, let me give expression to the emotions of pleasure with which I have always witnessed these Farmers'
Festivals, as often as I have had an opportunity of attending them. They seem to me to come nearer to fulfilling the
true idea of republican holidays, than any which our country has hitherto afforded. I know not how much they may
do for the great interest which they are primarily designed
to promote. It might not be easy to measure their precise
effect in improving the cultivation, or enlarging the yield,
of the soil, -though, even as to these ends, their influence,
I am persuaded, is by no means inconsiderable. No one,
indeed, can doubt, that for spreading information, for exciting and directing inquiry, for encouraging experiment,
for stimulating emulation, and for exhibiting the practical
and beneficial results of them all, such occasions furnish
means and opportunities which could be supplied in no
other way; and I venture to say, that there is not a farmer
before me at this moment, who, if he should be rebuked on
his return by some stay-at-home neighbor or by some overanxious spouse, as having lost a day in attending the Cattle Show, would not confidently reply, that, instead of losing one day, he had gained ten, in the new ideas and fresh
incentives which he had brought back for his future efforts.
But, however this may be, the influence of such occasions in other ways is even more appreciable. Their influence in the cultivation of good feelings and good fellowship
among the friends of agriculture, and of labor generally,




in different parts of the State and of the nation; their
efficacy in sowing the seeds and increasing the harvest
of mutual acquaintance, mutual regard(, mutual respect,
among all, of all classes, sexes, and occupations, who attend them; their annual operation in garnering up in the
hearts of each one of us a seasonable supply of good-will
and friendly sentiment towards each other, against the day
when personal competitions or political conflicts shall come
round to bring blight and mildew to so many of the nobler
feelings of the soul, and to threaten starvation and famine
to the whole better part of our nature, -these are among
the results of such festivals as this, which must ever commend them to the regard of every Christian philanthropist.
You are here, my friends, from all quarters of the Old
Colony, and fiom many other parts of the Commonwealth and of the country, from all pursuits and professions and political parties, to join hands and hearts in furtherance of the great industrial interests of the people.
Some of you are here as practical producers, proud to display the results of your own labor and skill in the field or
the dairy; and some of you have come as amateurs, gratified to behold the successes and achievements of your
neighbors or friends.  And we have all come as consuwmers, whether of our own or of other people's produce;
and we all rejoice in the assurances and evidences which
such occasions afford, that it will not be the fault of the
ignorance or the idleness of man, if an abundance of the
best food shall ever be wanting to ourselves or our children.
But wTe have all come, too, I trust and believe, in no vain
and arrogant reliance on human industry or human science
for our daily bread, but with hearts grateful towards Heaven for the gracious promise that seed-time and harvest
shall never fail, and for the great providential agencies to
which we primarily owe whatever of agricultural success
we have enjoyed or witnessed.




4
For, indeed, if there be any thing calculated to inspire a
spirit of devout dependence and gratitude in the heart of
man, it is the course of nature as contemplated in the operations of the husbandman. There are at least two things
which a farmer can never do without, - the sun and the
shower. No industry, no science, can supply their place.
For almost every thing else there may be some sort of substitute contrived. But who can contrive a substitute for a
day's sunshine, or even for an hour's rain?  What artificial irrigation could prevent or mitigate the consequences
of a midsummer's drought?  What mechanical arrangement of stoves, what chemical evolution of heat, could
stay the ravages of' an early fiost? I-ow impotent is the
arm of man, in presence of agencies like these, blighting
in a week, or even nipping in a night, the whole result of
a year of toil!  We may invent curious implements and
marvellous machines to save our own labor; but we can
invent nothing which shall dispense with the blessing of
God. Man may plough, man may plant; but man cannot
give the increase. The great indispensable machinery of
agriculture must ever be the " M6canique C61este," that
sublime and stupendous system of suns and spheres and
rolling orbs, moving on in serene and solemn majesty above
us, and -
" For ever singing, as they shine,
The hand that made us is Divine."
And now, Mr. President and Gentlemen, I am here for no
rhetorical display. I shall attempt nothing of the poetry or
romance of agriculture. But I desire to invite your attention to a few plain and practical considerations, which have
struck me as not unimportant or uninteresting in themselves, and as not inappropriate to an occasion of this sort.
Few things have been iuore noticeable, and few things, I
am sure, more gratifying to us all, than the increased inter



5
est which has been lately manifested in many parts of the
Union, and more especially in our own Commonwealth,
in the honored cause for which you are associated. We
have all witnessed with no ordinary satisfaction the efforts
which have been made, and which have been so successfully made, to awaken the public mind to a deeper sense
of the importance and dignity of agricultural pursuits.
We have all rejoiced to find some of our ablest and most
accomplished minds devoting themselves to subjects connected with the cultivation of land, the improvement of
stock, the scientific analysis of soils and of plants, and the
preservation and propagation of fruit-trees and foresttrees. The best wishes and the best hopes of us all have
attended the local and the national conventions which
have been held on the subject during the past year; and
we have hailed with peculiar pleasure the establishment and
organization of a Board of Agriculture, under the auspices
of our own Commonwealth.
I think we shall acknowledge, however, that it is of the
highest importance, at such a moment, that we should
have some correct and exact ideas as to what is to be
done, and as to what can be accomplished, in this behalf;
that we should take a careful survey of the actual condition of American agriculture and of the real wants of the
American farmer; so that we may propose to ourselves
some definite, practical, and practicable ends, and so that
our efforts may terminate in something better than vague
promises, exaggerated estimates, and false expectations.
We have been accustomed, of late years, to hear from
some quarters of the country, and from some parts of the
commnunity, language of this sort: - Agriculture is a neglected interest. Government does nothing for it. Legislators, State and National, can find time and can find
inducements for promoting and for protecting every other
employment and occupation of the people. They can do




6
~very thing for commerce. They can do every thing for
the fisheries. They can do every thing for manufactures
and the mechanic arts. But the farmers can find nobody
to do or to say any thing in their behalf.
Now, I will not stop to inquire directly how far this
language is reasonable or just, either towards our State or
National Governments. Nor will I do more than suggest,
in this connection, that, if there has been any wrong of this
kind, whether of omission or of commission, the redress has
always been within the reach of the injured parties; the
farmers having always been a great majority in the nation at large, embracing, it is estimated, "more than threefourths of the population," and having thus had it always in
their power to control the action of the Government at any
time, through the simple agency of the elective franchise.
But taking it for granted, for a moment, that the allegation has been well laid, that the grievance has been real,
that an interposition has at last been successfully made,
and that the farmers are henceforth about to have their
own way in the affairs of the country, I am disposed to
ask some such questions as these: —What can Government
do for American agriculture? What can it do for the interests and welfare of the farmers? WVhat could it ever
have done?  What has it done or left undone hitherto?
I do not state these questions as distinct propositions, to
be distinctly and formally treated in the order in which
they have been stated, like the heads of an old-fashioned
sermon, but as presenting the details of a general inquiry
which I desire to institute, and, as far as possible, within
the reasonable limits of such a discourse, to answer.
And here, at the outset, let me remark, that it is not
altogether easy or practicable to treat the agricultural interests of the United States as a single idea, and to include
them all as the subject of a common discussion. When
we speak of British agriculture or of European agriculture,




7
we have in our minds a homogeneous subject. But the
vast territorial extent of our country, and its varied soils
and climates and productions, prevent altogether that perfect unity and identity of interest which are found among
the tillers of the earth in other lands. The planting interests of the Southern States present, I need not say, a
totally different subject of discussion from the farming interests of the Northern and Western States.  The character of the labor by which the great crops of the South are
raised, and the purposes to which they are applied, make
them an obvious exception to the general subject of American agriculture, or, at any rate, so distinct a branch of it
as requires a distinct and separate consideration.
I intend, then, in these remarks, to confine myself to the
agriculture which is carried on by the hands of freemen,
and which is generally occupied in the production of food.
And in reference to American agriculture, as thus understood, I begin by asserting that Government can do little
or nothing for its protection, in the sense in which the term
"' protection" is employed in such connections, by any direct means; and that, even were what is called " the Protecting System," the established policy of the country, it
would be impossible to apply it to any considerable extent,
directly and immediately, to agriculture.
The protection of agriculture is an idea plainly applicable to countries in which food cannot be produced in sufficient quantities to meet the wants of the population, or in
which it cannot be produced at all, except at a higher cost
than that at which it could be procured from other sources
of supply. It supposes a competition, actual, or at least
possible, in our own markets with the products of our own
fields. It is a protection against something, and that something is obviously foreign importation.
Great Britain may be in a condition to protect her agriculture. And she did so in earnest, and most effectively,




for a long series of years, by a systematic arrangement of
prohibitory duties or sliding scales. She may now find it
more consistent with her general welfare, —more for her
advantage, in view of her manufacturing and commercial
interests, -more for the improvement of her whole condition, to relax or abandon this system for a time or altogether. But this is a question with her of policy, and not
of power. Nobody doubts that the state of British agriculture, the relation of production to population, the proportion of supply to demand, render it susceptible of this
sort of governmental protection. And so it may be, and so
it is, with other countries of the Old World, and perhaps
of the New.
But what could prohibitory duties or sliding scales, applied to agricultural productions, accomplish for the American farmer? Is there any scarcity of food among us,
inviting supplies from  abroad?  Can food be raised in
other regions, and imported into our country, at lower rates
than those at which we can raise it for ourselves? Do any
foreign products of the soil enter into injurious competition
with our own products in the American market?  There
may be a little flax-seed, a little coarse wool, or a few
hides, brought here from South America or the East Indies; and now and then, during the prevalence of a mysterious blight, our provincial neighbors may supply us with a
few potatoes, or even with a little wheat. But these are
exceptional cases, entirely capable of explanation, if they
were important enough to justify the consumption of time
which such an explanation would involve.
The great peculiarity in the condition of the United
States is, I need not say, its immense and immeasurable
agricultural resources.  Our boundless extent of fertile
land, and the hardly more than nominal price at which it
may be purchased, have settled the question for a thousand
years, if not for ever, that, unless in some extraordinary




9
emergency of famine or of civil war, our farmers will have
the undisputed control of our own markets, without the aid
of prohibitory duties or protective tariffs. It may be said
to be with our lands, as it certainly is with our liberties:
the condition of both may be described by the striking
couplet of Dryden: —
" Our only grievance is excess of ease,
Freedom our pain, and plenty our disease."
Other Governments can do much more for political liberty
than our Government can do, because there is so much
more of this sort in other countries left to be done. We
have a noble system of independence and freedom, already
established and secured to us by the toil and treasure and
blood of our fathers. We of this generation may say
with the glorious apostle:'" With a great price purchased
they this freedom; but we were born free."  The most,
therefore, that any American Government can do now is
to maintain, uphold, and administer, according to the true
spirit and intent of those who acquired it, the ample patrimony of freedom which has been bequeathed to us. God
grant that there may never be wanting to us rulers capable
of doing so!
And now, my friends, Nature - I should rather say,
a kind Providence -has done for our agricultural condition very much what the wisdom and valor of our fathers
have effected for our political condition. It has given us a
vast extent of virgin soil, susceptible of every variety of
culture, and capable of yielding food for countless millions
beyond our present population. It is ours to occupy, to
enjoy, to improve and preserve it; and no protective systems are necessary to secure a market for as much of its
produce as we, and our children, and our children's children
for a hundred generations, can eat.  Government can thus
do nothing, nothing whatever, in the way of direct and im2




10
mediate protection to American agriculture. And when it
is said, therefore, that our legislators can protect commerce,
can protect manufactures, can find time to look after all
the interests of the merchant, the mechanic, the artisan,
the navigator, and the fisherman, but can find no time to
look after the interests of the farmer, —let it not be forgotten that such protection as may be afforded to commerce
and manufactures, through the aid of a revenue system, is,
from the nature of things, impracticable and impossible for
agriculture. Let it not be forgotten, that, as to the great
mass of human food which our soil supplies, we have a
natural and perpetual monopoly in our own markets for as
much as we can any way furnish mouths to consume or
money to pay for. The ability to consume, in a word,
pecuniary or physical, is the only limit to the demand for
agricultural produce among ourselves; and this ability can
by no possibility be affected by any legislative measures
directed to the immediate promotion or protection of agriculture.
And here let me suggest a distinction, which, though
often lost sight of, is, i in this country at least, a real distinction, and not unworthy of serious attention: I mean
the distinction between the promotion of agriculture, and
the promotion of the immediate interests of those engaged
in it. The promotion of agriculture looks obviously to
an extended and an improved cultivation of the soil, to
the introduction of better processes and better implements
of agricultural labor, and to the consequent production of
larger crops and more luxuriant harvests. But would such
results be necessarily for the immediate benefit of the great
body of American farmers?  Would their condition, as
individuals or as an aggregate class, be improved, - would
their crops be enhanced in price, or stand a chance of commanding a convenient sale at any price, if the number of
farmers were multiplied, if the breadth of land under culti



11
vation were extended, and if, by the aid of greater science,
of' new manures, new machines, and new modes of culture,
each one of them could double the yield of every acre of
his land? Is it not obvious, that, unless new and adequate
markets were simultaneously opened, the only consequence
would be a still greater overplus of production, a still
greater diminution of agricultural produce, and a still
greater depression of the individual prosperity and welfare of the farmers?
The result of both the considerations which I have thus
far suggested is the same. The great agricultural want of
our country is the want of consumers and not of producers,
of mouths and not of hands, of markets and not of crops.
And this is a want which no government protection, like
that which has been, or may be, afforded to manufactures
or to commerce, can possibly supply. On the contrary,
that sort of protection would only increase the difficulty,
and aggravate the disease.
Indeed, the policy of our Government, in one particular at least, has already tended greatly to this result: I
mean its Public Land Policy. Who can say that Government has done nothing for the protection of agriculture,
who contemplates, for an instant, the course and consequences of this gigantic system? Consider the expenditure of care and of money, at which our vast territorial
possessions have been acquired! Consider the expensive
negociations, and the still more expensive wars, by which
they have been purchased or conquered from foreign nations or from the Indian tribes! Consider the complicated
and costly machinery of their survey and sale, and the systematic provisions which have been made for securing to
every settler that first great want of an independent farmer,
- a perfect title to his land! And then consider the almost
nominal price at which any number of acres may be purchased!




12
I would not question the wisdom of this policy, for the
purposes for which it was designed. It was designed to
effect an early settlement and civilization of the great West;
and its wisdom is justified by the existence, at so early a
period after its adoption, of so many populous and prosperous States, in regions which were, seemingly but yesterday, the abodes of wild beasts or wilder men. We hail
those new and noble States, as they successively and
rapidly advance to maturity, as the proudest products of
our land, and welcome them to the privileges and the
glories of a Union which we pray may be perpetual.
The influences of this policy, in some other wvays, may
have been of a more doubtful character. But who can say
that the American Government has done nothing for agriculture, with such a policy, so long and systematically
pursued, before his eyes? What greater bounty could be
contrived for the multiplication of farmers, and for the
extended cultivation of the soil, than the standing offer of
the best land in the world, with its title guaranteed by
the strong arm of the nation, and its muniments deposited
in the iron safes of the Government, at a dollar and a quarter an acre? -— unless, indeed, it be found in the absolute
gift of a homestead to every settler for two or three years,
or in the " vote yourself a farm," or " land for the landless,"
projects of the present day. What has the Government
ever done for commerce or for manufactures, which can
compare with this great bonus to agriculture? Nay, what
has the Government ever done, or ever been able to do, to
counteract the constant drain upon commercial and manufacturing labor which this system has created?
No one, I suppose, can doubt that one of the great obstacles in the way of establishing and maintaining a manufacturing system, and of building up the mechanic arts, in
these Eastern States, has been the constant inducement
and temptation to leave home and go off to the West,




13
w\hich have been held out, in the fertility and cheapness of
the Western lands, to the young men and young women,
whose hands were essential to the loom, the spindle, the
lapstone or the anvil. The absolute necessity of counteracting, these indueenments and temptations, by an increased
rate of wages at home, has materially aggravated one of
the greatest difficulties which we have encountered, in the
way of a successful competition with the manufacturers of
the old world. The influence of the luxuriant prairies and
rich bottoms of Illinois, and Indiana, and Iowa, and'Wisconsin, and the rest, has been similar to that of the placers
and gold mines of California at the present moment; and,
though less in degree, has been far more steady and durable than that is likely to be. Our young men and young
women will not be long in learning, that there are more profitable diggings, in the long run, on this side of the Rocky
MIountains than on the other. They will not be long in
appreciating the philosophy of the cock, in the old fable of
SEsop, who discovered that corn was a more reliable treasure than jewels. They will not be long in realizing, that
even golden carrots may be a more certain crop than carats
of gold. They will soon understand the wisdom of Franklin, in his conclusion of one of the numbers of the " Busy
Body," — a little series of essays published by him in Philadelphia in 1729, and which, though among his earliest
compositions, are replete with the wit and shrewdness and
sterling common sense which characterized his maturer
productions.
" I shall conclude," said he, " with the words of my discreet friend, Agricola, of Chester County, when he gave
his son a good plantation, —' My son, I give thee now a
valuable parcel of land. I assure thee I have found a considerable quantity of gold by digging there: thee may'st
do the same; but thee must carefully observe this, — never
to dig more than plough-deep."'




14
The temptations of good land will last longer than those
of gold mines. There is a love for acres. There is a charm
in independent proprietorship.  There is health. and happiness, and a sense of fieedom, in rural life and rural labor.
There is a proud consciousness of virtue, and of worth, and
of self-reliance, in the breast of the honest and industrious
farmer, like that to which the simple shepherd of Shakspeare gave utterance, when reproached by the clown with
a want of courtly manners:"Sir, I am a true laborer. I earn that I eat, get that I
wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad
of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze, and my lambs
sucl."
Feelings and instincts like these, to which no bosom is a
stranger, will outweigh and outlast the temptations of the
richest placers of the Pacific, and will create a yearning
towards the broad fields and noble forests of the great
West, in the hearts of our enterprising young men and
young women, as long as a single township or a single
quarter section shall remain unsold or unsettled.  That
whole vast domain will thus continue to operate in the
future, as it has operated in the past, as a continual government bounty upon the multiplication of farmers, and the
extension of agriculture.
And now, having said thus much, and the limits of this
address will not allow me to say more, both in regard to
what Government cannot do for American agriculture, and
also as to what it actually has done in the past, I come to
a brief consideration of what it can do, and what it ought
to do, in the future.
In the first place, it can adopt systematic, comprehensive,
and permanent measures for ascertaining from year to year,
or certainly from census to census, the actual condition of
our country in relation to agriculture, the quantity of land




15
ander cultivation, the proportion of cultivated land devoted
to the production of different articles of food, the relation of
production to population in the various States and in the
country at large, the comparative productiveness of the
same crops in different parts of the Union and under different modes of culture, and generally whatever details
may be included in a complete statistical account of American agriculture.
Our commercial and navigating statistics are already
provided for, as incidental to our revenue-system.  WVe
need similar returns both of our agriculture and our manufactures; and I should not be sorry to have them committed
to a common bureau.
One of the brief sayings, which have given a name and a
perpetual fame to the Seven  Wise Men of Ancient Greece,
is the simple precept, " Know thyself."  And a celebrated
Latin poet has not been willing to regard it as a mere saying of human origin, but has emphatically declared that
it descended from heaven.
It was a saying addressed to individual man, and undoubtedly contemplated that self-examination, that searching of the heart, which is a duty of higher than human
authority, and which is essential to all moral or spiritual
improvement.  But it is a doctrine as applicable to the
outer as to the inner man, and as essential to the progress
and improvement of nations as of individuals. And this
country, beyond all other countries, needs to know itself, to
understand its own condition, to watch closely its own progress, to keep the riun of it, as we may well say, for it is
always on the run, advancing and going ahead with a rapidity never before witnessed, or dreamed of. More especially
should the industry of our country know itself, and realize
its own condition and circumstances. American labor, in
all its branches, should have a map, on which it may behold
its own aggregate position, and its own individual relations.




16
and by which it may be enabled to see what obstructions
and interferences are in the way of its prosperous progress;
to see particularly where it obstructs itself, by pressing into
departments already too crowded, and where it may obtain
relief and elbow-room in departments not yet occupied.
American agriculture, above all, should be able to look itself fairly in the face, as in a mirror, through the medium of
the most detailed and exact periodical surveys, that it may
discover seasonably any symptoms of over-action or of
under-action, if there be any; and that it may run no risk
of expending and wasting its energies in unprofitable toils.
In the next place, Government, State and National, can
encourage agricultural science, and promote agricultural
education.
This subject has been so nearly exhausted, during the
last year or two, by President Hitchcock's report to our
own Legislature, by Dr. Lee's reports to the Patent Office
at Washington, and by the lectures and addresses in which
it has been treated in all parts of the country, that I propose
to notice it very briefly.
Undoubtedly the noble system of common school education, which is already in existence among us, and for
which we can never be too grateful to our Puritan Fathers,
is itself no small aid to the cause of agriculture. The farmers, and the farmers' children, enjoy their full share of its
benefits. It furnishes that original sub-soil ploughing to
the youthful mind which is essential to the success of
whatever other culture it may be destined to undergo.
There is no education, after all, which can take the place
of reading, writing, and keeping accounts; and the young
man who is master of these elemental arts, and whose
eye has been sharpened by observation, and his mind
trained to reflection, and his heart disciplined to a sense of
moral and religious responsibility, - and these are the
great ends and the great achievements of our common




1,
schools, - will not go forth to the work of his life, whether
it be manual or mental, whether of the loom or the anvil, of
the pen or the plough, without the real, indispensable requisites for success.  The great secret and solution of the
wonderful advance which has been witnessed of late years,
in all the useful arts, has been the union of the thinking
mind and the working hand in the same person. Heretofore, for long ages, they have been everywhere separated.
One set of men have done the thinking, and another set
of men have done the working. The land has been tilled,
the loom has been tended, the hammer and the hoe have
been wielded, by slaves, or by men hardly more intelligent
or independent than their brute yoke-fellows.  In other
countries, to a considerable extent, and even in our own, so
far as one region and one race are concerned, this separation still exists. But a great change has been brought
about by the gradual progress of free institutions; and, in
the Free States of our own country especially, we see a
complete combination of the working hand and the thinking mind, of the strong arm and the intelligent soul, in the
same human frame. This has been the glorious result of
our common school system, the cost of which, great as it
has been and still is, has been remunerated a thousand fold,
even in a mere pecuniary way, by the improvements, inventions, discoveries, and savings of all sorts, which have been
made by educated labor in all the varied departments of
human industry. It is now everywhere seen and admitted,
that the most expensive labor which can be employed is
ignorant labor; and, fortunately, there is very little of it left
in the American market.
But, while the great substratum of all education for all
pursuits is abundantly and admirably supplied by our common schools, no one can fail to perceive, or hesitate to
admit, the advantages which may accrue from something
of a more specific and supplementary instruction for those
3




18
to whom the care and culture of the American soil is to
be committed. The earth beneath us has been too long,
regarded and treated as something incapable of being
injured by any thing short of a natural convulsion, or a
providential cataclysm.  We have been so long accustomed to dig it, and ditch it, and drain it, and hoe it, and
rake it, and harrow it, and trample it under our feet, and
plough long furrows in its back; and have so long found it
repaying such treatment by larger and larger measures of
endurance, generosity, and beneficence, — that we have been
ready to regard it as absolutely insensible to injury. Because our chains and stakes have exhibited from year to year
the same superficial measurements, we have flattered ourselves that our farms were undergoing no detriment or diminution. We have remembered the maxim of the law, "He
who owns the soil owns it to the sky," and have been careful to let nothing interfere with our air or daylight; but we
have omitted to look below the surface, and to discover and
provide against the robbery which has been annually perpetrated, by day and by night, upon its most valuable
ingredients and elements.
The discovery has at last been made, the danger has
been revealed, the alarm has been sounded; and if Government can provide bounties for the destruction of the wolves
and bears and foxes, which threaten our flocks, our herds,
and our hen-roosts, I see not how it can withhold some seasonable provision against the far more frequent and more
disastrous depredations by which our soil is despoiled of its
treasures, through the want of science and skill on the part
of those who till it. These depredations are none the less
treacherous, or the less formidable, I need not say, for being
carried on in no malicious spirit, and by no hostile hands.
The worst robberies, of every sort, moral or pecuniary,
of character, of property, or of opportunity, are those which
a man commits upon himself. It is due to ourselves, it is




19
due even more to our children, that the national soil should
not be impaired by our ignorance or our neglect. It is a
great trust-estate, of which each generation is entitled only
to the use, and for the strip and waste of which the grand
Proprietor of the Universe will hold us to account.
Whether the promotion of agricultural education shall
be undertaken through systematic courses of scientific lectures, or by agricultural schools and colleges, with experimental farms attached to them, or by the preparation and
distribution of agricultural tracts and treatises, or by all
combined, it is for the farmers to say. What they say will
not fail to be rightly and effectively said. With them
words will be things; for no Government will venture to
resist their deliberate and united appeals.
But let not the farmers, or the friends of the farmers, deceive themselves. When all that can be desired in this way
shall have been accomplished; when Government shall
have done its whole duty in regard to agricultural statistics
and agricultural science; when the products of every State
and of every district in the Union shall have been put in
the way of exact and periodical ascertainment; when the
American soil shall have been everywhere analyzed, and
when those who till it shall have been everywhere instructed in its peculiar adaptations, and its peculiar properties,
and its peculiar wants; when the whole vegetable and
animal and mineral kingdoms shall have been raked and
ransacked for the cheapest and most accessible and most
effective fertilizers; when some safe and convenient mode
shall have been contrived (according to the late suggestion of Lord Palmerston in England) for turning back the
drains and gutters and common sewers of our great cities
and towns upon our farms and gardens, instead of allowing them to run waste to the sea, breeding pestilence as
they flow, " the country thus purifying the towns, and the
towns fertilizing the country;" when the great doctrine of




20
modern science shall be practically recognized and applied,
that there is no waste in the physical universe, nothing
in excess, nothing useless, from the bone which the dog
growls over at our door, to the dung of the sea-fowl, for
which the nations of the earth are contending, on the most
distant and desolate island, but that
" Nature nerer lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and usea;" —
still, still, the great want of American agriculture will remain, -that want which I have alluded to, in the opening
of this address, and to which I recur once more, for a
few moments, in its conclusion, — the want of adequate
markets for the sale of its produce. Nay, the want will
only have been increased and aggravated by the greater
fertility of our fields, and the greater abundance of our
harvests.
Now, it is obvious, that these markets are either to be
supplied at home or abroad.
And I am not one of those, if any there be, who are
disposed to disparage the value of a foreign market for
any thing for which we can find one. It is clearly the duty
of our Government to make arrangements in every way in
its power by wise negotiations and just systems of reciprocity, for the introduction into foreign countries of the
largest possible amount of our surplus provisions and
breadstuffs. Such arrangements, however, are clearly commercial arrangements; and I refer to them merely as an
illustration, that what may seem to be done by our legislators only for the benefit of commerce, may really result in
the most important aid and advantage to agriculture.
I cannot pass from this topic, however, without the expression of an opinion, that the idea of an adequate foreign




21
market for our agricultural surplus has proved, and will
still prove, utterly fallacious and delusive. There is at
least one principle, in this connection, which may be considered as settled by the whole current of experience, and
by all the deductions and dictates of reason and common
sense. No large or considerable kingdom or country will
ever be habitually dependent on the soil of other countries
for the food of its inhabitants. Why, where would be the
power of Great Britain, were she compelled to look abroad
for the daily bread of her people? What a mockery would
be her boasted dominion over the seas! What a farce
her world-encircling chain of colonial possessions and mrilitary posts! With what face would she venture to interfere
with our fishing-grounds, or even to maintain her own, were
she liable to be starved out at any moment by our embargoes! We should soon learn how to bring her to terms,
as her own parliaments have so often brought her monarchs
to terms, by a simple refusal of supplies, a simple stopping
of rations.
I never think, Mr. President, of this dream of some of
our American farmers, that they are to raise food for all the
world, without associating it with the dream of Joseph of
old, or rather with his two successive dreams, as related to
his brethren, and recorded in Holy Writ: —
" Hear, I pray you," said he, " this dream which I have
dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the
field, and lo! my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and,
behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt
thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have
dominion over us? "
" And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his
brethren, and said: Behold, I have dreamed a dream more;
and, behold, the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars,
made obeisance to me."




Sir, the one of these dreams is as likely to be fulfilled
in our favor as the other. We may as well hope that the
constellations of the other hemisphere will stoop to make
obeisance to our constellation, and that the kings and
queens of the earth wVill bend and do homage to our republic, as that the sheaves of other lands will stand round
about and make obeisance to our sheaf, and the agriculture
of the world acknowledge its dependence upon our agriculture.
Indeed, the fulfilment of the one dream, as I have already
suggested, would speedily involve the fulfilment of the
other. No great nation can ever maintain its political independence, except by sufferance and courtesy, when it has
become absolutely dependent on another nation for its
food. As to Great Britain, moreover, to whom our farmers
have always been pointed for their most hopeful market,
and to whom, I doubt not, they may always look confidently for an occasional demand for some varieties of agricultiL'l produce, it is an admitted fact that she can feed
herself, as it is, in all ordinary seasons; and when she shall
have brought all her reserve land into cultivation, and reclaimed all her swamps and bogs and marshes, and established a better state of things for poor Ireland, and applied
the modern modes of systematic, scientific culture to the
whole soil of the United Kingdom, she may defy the farmers of the world. The whole notion of John Bull's submitting to be fed or foddered at our rack and out of our
manger, is as visionary as that of Brother Jonathan's putting his neck back again under the old British yoke.
Nature herself, indeed, presents an obstacle which settles
the question for ever. It has been calculated by the late
lamented Mr. Porter, in his Progress of the British Nation
(a work of standard authority), that " to supply the United
Kingdom with the simple article of wheat would call for
the employment of more than twice the amount of ship



23
ping which now annually enters our ports;" and that "to
bring to our shores every article of agricultural produce
in the abundance we now enjoy, would probably give
constant occupation to the mercantile navy of the whole
world."
The sum of the whole matter is this: American agriculture must look at home for its great market. It must look
to consumers upon its own soil and at its own doors for its
only sufficient and its all-sufficient demand. The natural
and rapid increase of population among ourselves, and from
the native stock, will do something for it. The thronging
multitudes of emigrants, who are landed daily on our
shores, will do something for it. If we cannot carry over
our corn to the hungry millions of Europe, we can bring
the hungry millions of Europe over to take for themselves
from our granaries. This is the necessary course of things;
and it is to be recognized and provided for, - not resisted,
not complained of, but regulated and accepted cheerfully,
as our part and lot in the dispensation of Providence. Our
colonial fathers and mothers were pilgrims and exiles; and
though we may look for no second May-flower, and no
second Plymouth Rock, there are honest and heroic hearts
beating beneath many a tattered frock or weather-beaten
jacket from the Emerald Isle or the German Empire, which
demand and deserve our sympathy and succor; and it
would be a dishonor to the memory of our fathers, if we,
their civilized descendants, should be found holding out a
less hospitable reception to the homeless exile of the present day, than they received even from the poor untutored
Indian, whom they were destined so sadly to displace and
exterminate, when he cried to them, " Welcome, Englishmen! "
But something more than the increase of population,
whether by multiplication at home or by immigration from
abroad, is necessary for the relief and just remuneration of




24
American agriculture.  Indeed (as I have already suggested), if these throngs of emigrants, and if so many of
the young men and women of our own stock, are to swarm
over at once to our Western lands, and enter forthwith upon a life of agricultural production, they will only increase
and aggravate the difficulties under which our farmers
already labor. Instead of population gaining upon food,
food will still go on gaining upon population; instead of
mouths waiting for bread, we shall perpetuate the spectacle of bread waiting, and waiting in vain, for mouths.
In one word, there must be a division and distribution of
labor in our country, to a much greater extent than exists
at present, in order that agricultural industry may receive its
just rewards. There must be more, and more numerous,
separate classes of consumers, distinct from the producers,
in order that food may command a fair price, and afford
an adequate compensation and encouragement to the labor
which is employed in raising it. Cheap food is a blessing
not to be spoken lightly of; but the laborer is worthy of his
hire, and it can never be the policy of any country to have
food so cheap that it shall not pay for the raising, that it
shall not pay something more than the mere cost of the
raising. It can never be the policy of a free republican
country like ours, where the most important rights and
duties of Government are enjoyed and exercised by all men
alike and equally, and where intelligence, education, and
individual independence are essential to the maintenance
of our liberties, to reduce either the profits of land or the
wages of labor to the standard of a bare subsistence.
Farming is never destined to be a means of fortune-making, and we may all thank Heaven that it is so. If millionnaires and capitalists and speculators could make their cent
per cent per annum by growing corn, we should soon see
our land bought up for permanent investment for hirelings
to till; and our little independent proprietors, cultivating




25
their own acres, would be no longer the stay and staff of
our republican institutions and our republican principles.
God grant that the day may never come, when this country shall be without an independent rural population, owning no lord or master this side of Heaven; maintaining, in
all their purity and freshness, those rural manners and rural
habits which are the very salt and saving grace of our
social and our political system. God grant that the day
may never come, when some American Goldsmith shall
paint our rural villages deserted, our rural virtues leaving
the land:"E'en now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Contented toil, and hospitable care,
And kind, connubial tenderness, are there;
And piety with wishes placed above,
And steady loyalty, and faithful love."
But the farmer ought to have something more than a
mere living price for his products. He ought to be able to
lay up something to send a son to college, or to set up a
daughter in house-keeping, or to support his wife and himself, and keep the wolf from the door, when sickness or
old age shall put a stop to their daily toil. The true protection of agriculture, and the true promotion of the welfare of the individual farmer, are to be found, and can only
be found, in building up the manufacturing and mechanic
arts of our country, in creating a diversified industry, and
in establishing more proportionate relations between the
various departments of human labor. When this shall be
accomplished, there will be less need of Government intervention for encouraging agricultural science and diffusing
agricultural information. It will then cease to be recorded
of our American agriculture, that "its two prominent features are its productiveness of crops, and its destructiveness
of soil;" for it is the one of these features which leads
4




26
directly to the other. It is the over-production of our agriculture which causes so much of careless and destructive
cultivation. It is the superabundance of our aggregate
harvests which occasions the meagreness of so many of
our individual harvests. Who cares to make his farm
yield double its present crop, when there is so precarious a
market for what it yields already? Who can style him
a benefactor who makes two blades of grass grow where
only one grew before, when the result of such a process
must be to diminish the chances of remuneration to the
laborer, and when doubling the product is so likely to
divide an already inadequate price?
And now, my friends, I am not about to violate the
political neutrality of this occasion, by inquiring how this
diversified industry, which is so necessary to the prosperity
of the farmer, and to the promotion of agriculture, is to be
brought about; whether by protective tariffs, or judicious
tariffs, or moderate specific duties, or reasonable discrimination, or by ad-valorems and free trade. This question,
though it never ought to have been permitted to enter into
party politics, has practically become so identified with
them, that it must be left to other occasions.  But the
necessity of a greater distribution of labor to the prosperity
of all concerned in labor, and the especial need which the
American farmer feels, at this moment, of more persons
engaged in other pursuits, who may become purchasers
and consumers of his produce, and the danger that the
American soil will receive serious and permanent detriment
from the careless, hand-to-mouth, cultivation, which such
a state of things induces,- these are no party topics.
They are great truths, which all must admit, and which all
ought to lay to heart.
There is a letter of Dr. Franklin's, written in London on
the 22d of April, 1771, to Humphry Marshall, a Pennsylvania Farmer, which contains as much practical wisdom




27
as I ever remember to have found in the same compass, in
relation to the prosperity of the American farmer. It is as
applicable now as when it was written; and it ought to be
printed in good legible type, and hung up in a frame in
every farmer's house in the Union:"The Colonies," says he, "that produce provisions, grow
very fast. But, of the countries that take off those provisions, some do not increase at all, as the European nations;
and others, as the West India Colonies, not in the same
proportion. So that, though the demand at present may
be sufficient, it cannot long continue so. Every manufacturer encouraged in our country makes part of a market
for provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money
to the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for the
manufactures he supplies. Here in England," he adds, " it
is well known and understood, that, wherever a manufacture is established which employs a number of hands, it
raises the value of lands in the neighboring country all
around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand
for the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of
money drawn by the manufacturers to their part of the
country. It seems, therefore, the interest of all our farmers
and owners of lands to encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones, imported among us from
distant countries."
In these golden words of Franklin, which could find no
better illustration the world over than here, in presence of
those to whose lands and to whose crops yonder mills and
furnaces and machine-shops have given a value so far
beyond any which they could otherwise have commanded,
- if these golden words of Franklin, I say, could be impressed upon the heart and mind of every farmer in our
land, there would be less complaint that our Government
had found time to do every thing for manufactures and the
mechanic arts, and had done nothing for agriculture; and it




28
would be seen and understood, that whatever had been done
for any one of the great interests of American labor had
been done for all; and that all were bound up together for
a common weal or a common woe, incapable of separation
or opposition. There is nothing indeed more evident, and
nothing more beautiful, than the harmony of all the great
industrial interests in our Union. There may be jealousies
and rivalries and oppositions between the farmers and the
manufacturers and the merchants elsewhere, in the old,
closely settled, and crowded populations of Europe; but
there can be none reasonably, none rightfully, here. Nothing
short of miraculous intervention, like that which watered
the fleece of Gideon, while all the other fleeces were dry,
can elevate one branch of industry, or one department of
labor, at the expense of another. The highest prosperity
of each is not only consistent with, but inseparable from,
the highest prosperity of all. What is done for any is done
for all; and all find their best encouragement and protection
in the common welfare and prosperity of the whole community.  WVe see, or ought to see, something of that
mutual sympathy and succor among American laborers, of
which so graphic a sketch is given by one of the prophets
of Israel: " So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith,
and he that stmootheth with the hammer him that smote
the anvil. They helped every one his neighbor; and every
one said to his brother, Be of good courage."
The greatest division of labor, the most complete and
cordial union among laborers, - this is the true motto
and maxim which our condition suggests and inculcates;
and the American farmer should be the first to adopt and
cherish it.
A word or two, Mr. President and gentlemen, and only a
word or two, in conclusion. In all that I have said, I have
spoken, as I proposed to speak, of American agriculture, so
far as it is occupied in the production of' food, and through




29
the agency of free labor, in all parts of our wide-spread
land. In looking at the agriculture of Massachusetts as a
separate State, we find many of the circumstances, which
characterize the agricultural condition of the country at
large, reversed. There is no over-production of food, and
no danger of any such over-production, for our own population within our own limits. On the contrary, it has been
estimated that we are at this moment dependent on our
sister States for more than three millions of bushels of
breadstuffs, - being a full half of our whole consumption.
Now, so far as this fact may fairly betoken any bad cultivation on the part of our farmers; so far as, taken in
connection with other facts, it indicates a deterioration of
our soil, and a progressive disproportion between the acres
in cultivation and the crops which they yield, - it is a fact
deeply to be deplored, and which ought to furnish a serious
warning to the Government and the people of the Commonwealth.
But, so far as it only indicates a greater division and
distribution of labor within our own borders; so far as it
is only the result of a gradual multiplication of mechanics
and manufacturers among us, to consume the products, not
only of our own husbandmen, but of those of other States,
neighboring and remote, - it is a subject of positive and
unqualified congratulation. For one, I never desire to see
the day when Massachusetts shall feed herself. Nature has
marked and quoted her for a different destiny. Her long
line of indented sea-coast, stretching out around two noble
capes, and bending in again along two noble bays, designates her unmistakably for a commercial and navigating
State; and her countless fleets of coasters and fishing
smacks and merchant-ships and whalers give ample attestation that she has not been blind to her vocation. Her
numerous rivers and streams, with their abundant waterfalls, designate her hardly less distinctly as a manufacturing




30
State; and her sons, and her daughters too, are fast proving
that they know how to fulfil this destiny also.  A great
agricultural State she was never made for. If she ever
feeds herself, it will be by the decrease of her population,
and not by the adequacy of her products. Her farmers will
always find enough to occupy them. The perishable articles of daily consumption, which must be found at one's
door, or not at all, must come always from them. Their
milk, their garden-fruits and vegetables, their hay too, and
their eggs and poultry, call hardly be interfered with injuriously, if at all, by any supplies from abroad, and can hardly
be furnished in too large quantities at home. But the
cereal grains, the beef and pork and mutton, and the butter
and cheese of other States, are, I trust, to find a still
increasing market in Massachusetts, in exchange for the
products of her looms and anvils and lap-stones, and for
the earnings of her commerce and fisheries. I would gladly
see the United States independent of all foreign nations
for all the necessaries of life, - clothing as well as food;
but I do not desire to see the separate States independent
of each other: first, because climate, soil, geographical position, and physical condition, designate them for different
departments of industry, and their own highest prosperity
will be subserved by following nature; and, second, because
these mutual wants and mutual dependencies are among
the strongest bonds of our blessed Union, and give the
best guaranty that it shall endure for ever.
Let Massachusetts do all the farming she can; and all
that she does, let her be sure to do well. Let her transmit no
exhausted or impoverished soil to posterity. Let her exhibit
to all the world what industry and energy and thrift and
temperance and education and science can do, in overcoming the disadvantages and obstacles of a hard soil and a stern
sky. Let her be a model State in agriculture, and in whatever else she undertakes. But let her not dream of feeding




31
herself. For myself, I should feel as if either the days of the
American Union were numbered, or certainly as if her own
house were about to be left unto her desolate, if the time
should ever come when the wheat of Pennsylvania and
Maryland, and the pork of Ohio, and the beef and mutton
of New York and Vermont, and the yellow corn of Virginia, and the rice of the Carolinas, could find no ready
market for their sale, and no willing and watering mouths
for their consumption, in the old Bay State. I delight to
contemplate the various members of this vast republic,
like members of a common family, not all alike, but with
only such distinctions as become sisters; not selfishly and
churlishly attempting to do every thing for themselves, or
to interfere with each other's vocation, but pursuing their
different destinies in a spirit of mutual kindness and mutual reliance; freely interchanging the products of their soil
and of their skill in time of peace, and firmly interposing
their united power for the common protection in time of
war; bearing each other's burdens; supplying each other's
wants; remembering each other's weaknesses; rejoicing in
each other's prosperity; and all clustering with eager affection around the car of a common Liberty, - like the Hours
in the exquisite fresco of Guido around the chariot of the
Sun, — as it advances to scatter the shades of ignorance
and oppression, and to spread light and freedom and happiness over the world!
Gentlemen, I can offer no better prayer to Heaven, either
for human liberty or for human labor in all its branches,
than that this spectacle of concord and harmony among
the American States may be witnessed in still increasing
beauty and perfection, as long as the Sun or the Hours
shall roll on!