4 
 
 AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 SOCIETY OE MIDDLESEX HUSBANDMEN 
 
 AND 
 
 MANUFACTURERS, 
 
 DELIVERED AT CONCORD, OCTOBER 7, 1846. 
 
 
 By JOHN G. PALFREY, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 METCALF AND COMPANY, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 1846. 
 
S *\< OV.A asVx 
 
 '‘Vvx> r\ 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President and Fellow-citizens : — 
 
 I present myself before you for a hearing with extremely 
 humble claims. I am not qualified to address an assembly of 
 intelligent farmers. I have no practical knowledge of agricul¬ 
 ture, or even of gardening. I say it not without shame, and 
 with very great regret. More than half of the time since I 
 was fifteen years of age I have lived in a farming county of 
 Massachusetts, and for fifteen years I have been the owner of 
 some acres within its limits. They continue much as I re¬ 
 ceived them, good for little else but to hold the world together. 
 I ought to have found means to redeem time from the other 
 pursuits which have employed me, to devote to a pursuit which 
 so strengthens the body, humanizes and enforces the mind, 
 enlarges and intenerates the soul. I ought by this time to 
 have put my sand and bogs in a state to enter into the compe¬ 
 tition for your prize for reclaiming wastes. Perhaps it' may 
 not yet be altogether too late to begin. In the mean time, in 
 acknowledgment of your very flattering invitation, I can only 
 offer you to-day a few such remarks as may be within the ca¬ 
 pacity of an inexperienced and unskilled, but by no means un¬ 
 interested, observer. They will be confined to the subject of 
 Agriculture ; for though your Association extends its care 
 to another important branch of industry, I presume its at¬ 
 tention to be principally devoted to the former subject, as I 
 observe that last year, among twenty premiums, or more, only 
 one was offered for manufactured articles ; and though the two 
 subjects have mutual relations of the most important kind, it 
 would be aiming at quite too much to attempt to treat of them 
 together within so short a time. 
 
The industrial prosperity of our Commonwealth, fellow- 
 citizens, has been commonly considered abroad to lie in the 
 departments of manufactures and commerce. “ Of natural 
 productions,” said a Southern orator, a few years ago, “ Mas¬ 
 sachusetts exports but two articles, granite and ice ; ab¬ 
 solutely nothing but granite and ice.” The remark was a 
 long way from being accurate, when it was made. It would 
 be much further from the truth now. Massachusetts has be¬ 
 come known for her agricultural skill, industry, and prosperity. 
 Says the Secretary of the New York State Agricultural So¬ 
 ciety, as I find in the volume of its Transactions for 1843,— 
 “ The Empire State is indebted to Massachusetts for almost 
 every superior implement of husbandry ; and her agricultural 
 products, upon a soil far less fertile and favorable for cultiva¬ 
 tion than ours, are such as to require the most efficient system 
 of husbandry to equal her.” This is flattering language for 
 one living on the bottomless loam of Western New York to 
 use of the tillage of our expanse of sand, gravel, and rock. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, Massachusetts may and should become a 
 great agricultural State, and to have her known in that charac¬ 
 ter ought to be the ambition of her husbandmen, and of her 
 people in every walk of life. Several things go to the pro¬ 
 duction of a good agriculture, j Two of them are climate and 
 soil. But climate and soil are by no means the only ones, 
 and it is far from certain that they are even the most important. 
 The climate of Old England is no better, the soil is no better, 
 — except as far as the art of man has made it so, — than they 
 were twenty centuries ago, when Julius Ccesar found the half- 
 naked inhabitants living on milk and acorns. But what a gar¬ 
 den has that little country become under the hands of an intel¬ 
 ligent culture ! It is this, and nothing else, which feeds the 
 mouths of twenty millions of people, with their immense num¬ 
 ber of laboring and other domestic animals, — including not far 
 from fifty millions of sheep,—on a soil which, within less than 
 the age of man, only sustained nine millions. Formerly, ac¬ 
 cording to Professor Hitchcock, the average yield of wheat in 
 Great Britain was only nine bushels to the acre. Now, it is 
 more than nineteen bushels, and in several counties of England 
 and Scotland, the average rises to fifty bushels, j From her 
 
5 
 
 arable soil, of only about thirty-four millions of acres, — less 
 by one tenth than the surface of the State of Virginia, — five 
 millions of persons, of all ages, produce annually seven hundred 
 millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products, averaging 
 about one hundred and forty dollars’ worth to every man, 
 woman, and child of her agricultural population. According 
 to Mr. McCulloh, the soil and agriculture of Great Britain, 
 in 1837, furnished food sufficient for the comfortable subsist¬ 
 ence of three millions more inhabitants than in 1S20 ; and he 
 estimates the product of the wheat crop to be between three 
 and four times as great as in the year 1765, the year of the 
 Stamp Act, only eighty-one years ago. / 
 
 As to climate and soil, in the most obvious way of viewing 
 them, it must be allowed that Providence has not particularly 
 favored us. Our climate is neither one of the best, nor one 
 of the worst, for cultivation. Our summers are short, but 
 while their time lasts, with their fervid heats, they are very 
 busy at their work. They are very favorable to the growth of 
 maize, one of the most valuable articles of sustenance for man, 
 and to that of the grasses, which, in the pasture and the barn, 
 give a living to his herds and flocks. The potato loves a 
 moister atmosphere, and we do not generally bring it to its high¬ 
 est perfection ; but the Report of the Assessors of the Towns, 
 of five millions of bushels raised in Massachusetts in IS44, — 
 a statement certainly far below the truth, — shows that the 
 culture is not carried on entirely at disadvantage ; and certain¬ 
 ly we should be very ungrateful to complain of a climate, 
 which, with all its capricious extremes and alternations, con¬ 
 trives to yield us, year by year, such a magnificent and abun¬ 
 dant variety of choice esculent vegetables and fruits, giving us 
 side by side the hardier roots of the North, and the peaches 
 and melons of Persia and Egypt. 
 
 Our soil, certainly, taken as a whole, is none of the richest. 
 Neither the sand-banks of the coast, nor the rock-ribbed hills 
 of the interior, smile upon the farmer with quite the same 
 promise of luxuriance as the Shenandoah bottom, or the allu¬ 
 vium of the Mississippi. But, really, if agricultural science 
 continues to make advances as it has done of late, it would 
 seem as if natural soil was about the last thing that the farmer 
 
6 
 
 need to give himself any concern about. Things seem to he 
 coming to that pass, that a man need cave no more about the 
 quality of the ground on which he stakes out his garden, than 
 of that in which he digs the cellar to his house. If it is not 
 solid rock, so that neither ploughshare nor spade will pierce it, 
 that is about all he wants. The chemists seem to be in a fair 
 way to teach us how, out of any given surface whatever, — 
 soil or not, provided it can he turned over, — to make any 
 soil we want, for any cultivation, by a skilful application of 
 cheap manures. 
 
 I remember, many years ago, while enjoying with a distin¬ 
 guished citizen of this county the rich beauty and fragrance of 
 his beautiful garden, congratulating him on the natural advan¬ 
 tages lie must have enjoyed for the creation of such a paradise. 
 “ Natural advantages ! ” said he ; “ the powder that blew the 
 rocks where this garden stands cost me two hundred dollars.” 
 That was an extreme case, though probably even in that the 
 proprietor had his compensation for the heavy original cost, by 
 means of the fine site and exposure. But, in truth, clay, grav¬ 
 el, sand, and flint-stones are all yielding to chemistry. An 
 intelligent man has now only to look out a surface of proper 
 dimensions for his purpose, and within reach of a market, and 
 buy the right to fence it round as his own, and to have God’s 
 sunshine and rain fall upon it for his benefit, and then go on to 
 make it productive, — whether it be disposed or not, — to 
 make it productive for one thing or another, according to the 
 plan he may have in view. From the heaps of forest-leaves, 
 from the drifts of refuse sea-weed, from the fields of sea-shells 
 and bones along the beaches, from the peat-bog and the mud- 
 bottom, from the fatness of the barn-floor and the sty, he can 
 season his soil, as the cookery-books say, according to his 
 taste. If his sterile acres seem at first to be puny and fee¬ 
 ble colaborers, he can dose and feed them with such gen¬ 
 erous medicaments into a genial salubrity and a portly ro¬ 
 bustness. 
 
 But, fellow-citizens, what do we mean when we speak of a 
 good soil and a good climate ? In my poor judgment, there is 
 no better soil and climate than ours, under the wide span of 
 this beautiful heaven, for agriculture or for any other purpose. 
 
7 
 
 It was a gracious Providence, ever mindful of the good, and 
 of their posterity to the latest generation, which overruled 
 the intention of our Plymouth founders, and, instead of con¬ 
 ducting them to the haven where they would be in Hudson’s 
 River, brought them, for their stern sheltering-place, within 
 the sandy and stormy capes of Massachusetts Bay. It was 
 a benignant Providence, which, when their Puritan fellow- 
 soldier urged upon them the gift of the most luxurious island 
 of the West Indian seas, inclined their hearts to cleave still to 
 the hard but loving bosom of their New England homey/ We 
 have a climate and soil adapted to the production of steady 
 and efficient men, and therefore most fit for the cultivation of 
 every thing else worth producing. When the Lord God gave 
 to Adam the commission to replenish the earth and subdue it, 
 he made Adam’s children capable of subduing the earth just in 
 proportion to their capacity of exercising any other kind of 
 dominion ; and that capacity consists in vigorous frames and 
 vigorous souls. /Look not for the successful farmer, any more 
 than the successful any thing else, under a discipline where 
 all is ease and luxury. Look not for the efficient man in any 
 department amid the enervating softness of tropical breezes, 
 and the luxuriance of a spontaneous fertility. Look for him, 
 — if you mean to look in the right place, — where he has to 
 subdue the rugged, and force the reluctant, powers of nature. 
 It is hardship that begets hardihood ; it is struggle that makes 
 strong characters ; and sharp toil and the habit of contending 
 with difficulties are the life-giving medicine for body and mind. 
 From these come industry, economy, temperance, invention, 
 resource, self-reliance, manliness. And these are the “ wealth 
 of nations,” not only in a moral estimate, but in the esti¬ 
 mate of a wise political economy. / All the science, to which 
 Adam Smith was father, gets not a step further than those 
 Bible doctrines, — that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that 
 godliness, with its kindred, is profitable for all things. 
 
 / Ask me for the climate and soil where agriculture will 
 flourish most; I answer, they are those in which man most 
 flourishes. Give me the man, — the resolute and inventive 
 man, — and I know the thing will be done, whether it be the 
 building of a pyramid or the growth of an onion. /I cannot 
 
8 
 
 guess, fellow-citizens, what would have become of that offset 
 from the stout Anglo-Saxon stock, to which we belong, if we 
 had been sent away by a falsely indulgent fate to some more 
 attractive region, to suck in a voluptuous pleasure with the 
 fragrant softness of an Asiatic atmosphere, or breathe out our 
 gentle souls in sentimental raptures under the sunset glories of 
 an Italian sky. But I know what has become of it under 
 severer, but more congenial and more happy influences. Here 
 we must work hard for what we want. Thence comes the 
 strong and busy hand of the diligent, that at length' maketh rich. 
 We do not incline to waste what has cost us such pains, or 
 what may make our labors easier or more productive ; thence 
 comes the wise frugality, that guideth its affairs with discretion. 
 We must be up and doing with the dawn, to make the most of 
 our few long days ; thence comes the cheerful heart that doeth 
 good like a medicine. With so much to do, we need to have 
 clear heads and strong nerves ; and this enforces that temper¬ 
 ance which the Apostle says is needful to him who would 
 strive for the mastery in every thing. / Nature, among us 
 genial under coercion, but averse, and wayward, and austere 
 without it, will not do our bidding unless we guide and goad 
 her; and so she gives the training of the cunning hand, and 
 the forecasting and contriving head. The Massachusetts 
 country hoy, in his frolic days, is the wild and fearless play¬ 
 mate of the winter storms. He springs at daybreak from his 
 light and healthy sleep to wade through the snow to fodder his 
 cattle at the barn, and then to take another wade to feed his own 
 mind at the school-house. From this comes the wholesome 
 flow of blood, and the buoyant and resolute heart. And from 
 all this discipline together comes a man, capable of taming any 
 thing that he needs to be served by, and may honestly compel 
 to serve him, and accordingly capable of taming the earth, and 
 making it yield its richness to him and his. 
 
 I may seem to have anticipated, in substance, the next re¬ 
 mark I have to make, which is, that Massachusetts ought to 
 he a flourishing agricultural State, in comparison with others 
 seemingly more favored bj’ nature, because, unlike theirs, her 
 soil is tilled by freemen. If you are looking for a well con¬ 
 ducted agriculture, you must turn away from nature’s Edens 
 
9 
 
 in Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia. You must conic to where 
 free sinews break the soil of Pennsylvania, New England, Now 
 York. Slaveholders cannot be good farmers. To a great 
 extent, their luxurious and improvident habits prevent it. But, 
 independently of this, the labor they employ is not the proper 
 kind of labor to carry on farming in the best style. It is des¬ 
 picably inefficient, compared with that employed by the hus¬ 
 bandman who himself works with his people, and whose fel¬ 
 low-laborers are partly his sons, with the same interest as him¬ 
 self to do every thing and save every thing, and partly hired 
 men, who do the better for themselves the better they do for 
 him, who are inmates of his home, who sit at his table, who 
 talk over his plans with him, and share in the emulation and 
 pride with which he watches his own experiments and his own 
 industry, compared with those of his neighbours. 
 
 An eminent statesman of the Souili not long ago said, that 
 the emancipation of the slaves of lhat region would annihilate 
 a money value of twelve hundred millions of dollars. In my 
 humble opinion, never did a more erroneous statement proceed 
 from the merest tyro in political economy. In my judgment, 
 the estimated twelve hundred millions of dollars’ worth of men, 
 women, and children are not worth a dollar; — I mean, of 
 course, considered apart from all questions of humanity and 
 morals, and rated merely as producers of articles of value, 
 like the horse or ox ; — and I mean, also, they are not worth 
 it considered as slaves, which they must needs be, oy no 
 money value whatever could be attached to them. Of course, 
 in one sense, any thing, — man, or beast, or stone, or stock 
 (wooden stock or fancy stock), — is worth to its possessor any 
 amount which he may find a purchaser foolish enough to pay 
 for it in the market. But what I say is, that the labor you 
 can get out of a slave costs you more, in proportion to its 
 amount, than the service he would render you, if you would 
 make the nominal sacrifice, set him free outright, and pay him 
 honest wages, instead of the spare diet and clothing you al¬ 
 low him now. That operation, unless you could sell him to 
 somebody who knew no better, would eventually put money in 
 your pocket. 
 
 I have argued this question at length elsewhere, and will not 
 2 
 
10 
 
 weary your patience with it now. A short- statement of the 
 matter is this. A slaveholder does not get his work done 
 for nothing, nor for the interest merely of the investment in 
 his human chattel. He has to pay regular wages to his labor¬ 
 ers, partly by the day, partly by the year. He does not call 
 the money that he pays them wages, but the name he calls it 
 by makes no difference in the true balance of profit and loss. 
 “ A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” He has 
 to provide them food, clothing, and shelter, more or less, or 
 else they would not be kept alive to work for him. 
 
 And what does he get for his outlay, and what-must he get, 
 as long as the parties stand so related ? He gets the services 
 of lazy, incompetent, careless, wasteful laborers, — lazy, in¬ 
 competent, careless, and wasteful, because there is none of 
 that interest of their own at stake, which, according to the 
 constitution of man, as God made him, is the one thing need¬ 
 ful to set his hands and his mind profitably to work ; so that it 
 is a maxim, even in the South, where they know little of 
 what the best description of free labor is, that the labor of one 
 freeman is worth that of two slaves. They stand talking and 
 fooling, or lie down and burrow in the cane-shade, as soon as 
 the overseer’s eye is oft'; they are as cunning in breaking the 
 tools, so as at once to escape a flogging for the mischief, and 
 get a holiday by being sent off to have them mended, as a 
 freeman would be ingenious in mending them himself, so as to 
 help the business on. If they have two pecks of corn to 
 feed a horse, it is all the same to them if one goes into his 
 rack and the other under his feet, but a belter place than either 
 for one or both to go is into their own bag. They cannot be 
 forced to be any more capable for work than they already are ; 
 and to become more capable and useful is no concern at all of 
 theirs, but the contrary. It is no object to them, by improving 
 their capacity, to increase their labors. They have no wish to 
 raise their own market price, and make it for their master’s in¬ 
 terest to sell them away from their friends, or cause him to hold 
 them at a high rate, if they propose to buy their own freedom. 
 
 With such motives acting, and their opposites not acting, 
 on the laborers, who would undertake to carry on farming to 
 any advantage ? If you would see the difference between the 
 
11 
 
 results of slave labor and free, look at the contiguous counties 
 along the border line of Pennsylvania and Virginia. T select 
 this region for comparison, because no one who knows Penn¬ 
 sylvania would name her as a State of peculiar intelligence. 
 Except in the single great particular of freedom, there is, un¬ 
 happily, remarkably little difference between her laborers and 
 those of the sister State on her southern frontier. The com¬ 
 parison therefore illustrates remarkably well the different re¬ 
 sults, as to agricultural industry, of the free institutions on one 
 side of the line, and the domestic institution on the other. On 
 the one side, the exhausted soil, the great wastes and barrens, 
 the slovenly grain and tobacco fields, the tumble-down cabins, 
 the Virginia fences, show what may be expected where a la¬ 
 zy rich man undertakes to make a lazy poor man do his work 
 for him. On the other, the solid limestone walls, inclosing, in 
 vast stretches up gentle hill and though smiling valley, the 
 heavily nodding heads of the golden harvest, — the great lime¬ 
 stone barns, looking like the accomplishment of the plan of 
 him who said he must puli down his barns and build greater, be¬ 
 cause he had no place where to bestow his fruits and his goods, 
 — the great heaps of pulverized lime and of barn-yard fatness, 
 waiting to be poured into the soil to repair the last year’s ex¬ 
 haustion,— these show what widely different results may be 
 looked for where every man, high or low, rich or poor, is, in 
 one form or another, working and scheming for his own advan¬ 
 tage. 
 
 But, fellow-citizens, for the sake of illustrating one point 
 alone, that of the direct industrial results of mere slavery and 
 freedom, I have assumed a very unfavorable case, — the case 
 of a Slate in which freedom has by no means been accompa¬ 
 nied, to a proper degree, with its proper results of intelligence 
 and cultivation of the mind and character. Let me say, fur¬ 
 ther yet, that Massachusetts ought to be an eminently flourish¬ 
 ing agricultural State, because it is a State in which common 
 schools eminently flourish. I know very well that that blessed 
 institution has higher objects than those of mere industrial ac¬ 
 tivity and skill. But what then ? A beneficent Providence 
 has made all various good influences, of however different 
 kinds, to consist, and conspire, and cooperate with each other ; 
 
12 
 
 and it is no disparagement, but quite the contrary, to what may 
 be recognized as the most useful consequences from a useful 
 cause, to point out others which may be less apparent. In re¬ 
 spect to the mere increase of industrial power and resource, 
 our Common School system is working like a charm. I know 
 not to what other cause to ascribe it so much as to them, that, 
 “ so far as this Union is concerned, four fifths of all the im¬ 
 provements, inventions, and discoveries, in regard to machin¬ 
 ery, to agricultural implements, to superior models in ship¬ 
 building, and to the manufacture of those refined instruments 
 on which accuracy in scientific observations depends, have 
 originated in New England.”* There are some statistics re¬ 
 lating to the relative capacity of operatives which struck me 
 with amazement, as well as delight, when 1 first saw them. 
 And yet, on reflection, my only surprise was that they had 
 surprised me at all. I ought to have known that it would be 
 so. I refer to statistics gathered a few years ago, under the 
 care of the able and indefatigable Secretary of the Board of 
 Education ; and the conclusions they establish in respect to 
 manufacturing industry are, I conceive, not only equally ap¬ 
 plicable, but applicable to a still greater extent, to industry 
 employed in agriculture. 
 
 At the request of Mr. Mann, some of the gentlemen con¬ 
 nected with different manufacturing companies in the Common¬ 
 wealth made out schedules of the workmen and workwomen in 
 their employ, arranging them according to the amount of wages 
 which they respectively earned ; and then proceeded to inquire 
 what amount of common school instruction they had enjoyed 
 respectively, with a view to ascertain whether there was any 
 proportion between their present power of earning and their 
 past advantages for learning. I cannot undertake to recite the 
 particulars of the beautiful result to which this scrutiny led. 
 They may be read in Mr. Mann’s Fifth Report, for '.he year 
 1841. I must be content with a specimen or two. 
 
 One most intelligent gentleman, connected with establish¬ 
 ments which constantly employed three thousand persons, 
 gave, as results of his observations, 1. That the rudiments 
 
 Fifth Report of the Secretary of th/ Board of Education, p. 103. 
 
13 
 
 of a common school education are essential to the attainment 
 of skill and expertness on the part of laborers ; 2. That very 
 few, who have not enjoyed the advantages of a common school 
 education, ever rise above the lowest class of operatives ; and 
 that the labor of this class, when employed in manufacturing 
 operations which require even a very moderate degree of man¬ 
 ual or mental dexterity, is unproductive ; 3. That a large ma¬ 
 jority of the overseers, and others employed in situations which 
 require a high degree of skill in particular branches, have made 
 their way up from the condition of common laborers, with no 
 other advantage over a large proportion of those they have 
 left behind, than that derived from a better education.” 
 
 Proceeding, then, to particulars, derived from the books of 
 one of the mills under the direction of his house, which he af¬ 
 firms may be taken as a fair index of all the others, he says: — 
 “ The average number of operatives annually employed, for 
 the last three years, is twelve hundred. Of this number, there 
 are forty-five unable to write their own names, or about three 
 and three fourths per cent. Of the forty-five who are unable 
 to write, twenty-nine, or about two thirds, are employed in the 
 lowest department. / The difference between the wages earned 
 by the forty-five and the average wages oi an equal number of 
 the better educated class, is about twenty-seven per cent, in 
 favor of the latter.” “ My belief is,” he continues, “ that the 
 best cotton-mill in New England, with such operatives only as 
 these forty-five, who are unable to write their names, would nev¬ 
 er yield the proprietors a profit, and that the machinery would 
 soon be worn out.” “ The difference between the wages 
 earned by twenty-nine of the lowest class, and the same num¬ 
 ber in the higher, is sixty-six per cent.' 1 ' 1 “ Sixty-three persons 
 were imported from Manchester, in England, in 1S39. Among 
 these persons, there was scarcely one who could read or write, 
 and although a part of them had been accustomed to work in 
 cotton-mills, yet, from incapacity or idleness, they were unable 
 to earn sufficient to pay for their subsistence, and, at the expi¬ 
 ration of a few weeks, not more than half a dozen remained in 
 our employment.” * 
 
 Another gentleman in a similar position says :— u On our 
 
 * Ibid. pp. 90 - 92. 
 
14 
 
 pay-roll for the last month are borne the names of twelve hun¬ 
 dred and twenty-nine female operatives, forty of whom re¬ 
 ceipted for their pay by making their mark. Twenty-six of 
 these were paid according to the quantity of work turned off 
 from their machines. The average pay of these twenty-six 
 falls eighteen and one half per cent, below the general average 
 of those engaged in the same departments. Again ; we 
 have in our mills about one hundred and fifty females who 
 have, at some time, been engaged in teaching schools. Many 
 of them teach during the summer months, and work in the 
 mills in winter. The average wages of these ex-teachers I 
 find to be seventeen and three fourths per cent, above the gen¬ 
 eral average of our mills, and about forty per cent, above the 
 wages of the twenty-six who cannot write their names.” * 
 ^ An experienced manufacturer told Mr. Mann, that “ on substi¬ 
 tuting, in one of his cotton-mills, a better for a poorer educated 
 class of operatives, he was enabled to add twelve or fifteen per 
 cent, to the speed of his machinery without any increase of 
 damage or danger from the acceleration.” 
 
 Now, what does all this mean, expressed in general terms ? 
 It means that Massachusetts, by means of her common schools, 
 adds immensely to the amount and quality of her productive 
 labor. Schooling works here something like the addition made 
 to the productive resources of England by the application of 
 steam-power. As to manufactures, this is ascertained by 
 figures, that cannot lie. 'And I bold it to he quite as true of 
 the productive capacity of the man who follows the plough, 
 ^and the woman who manages the dairy, as of those who sit at 
 the loom. Why does the manufacturer, by such a settled 
 rule, earn more for himself or herself, and of course for the 
 employer, in proportion as he or she has been to school ? 
 Because of his and her better habits of industry, regularity, 
 and order; because of their greater prudence and ingenuity. 
 They know better the worth of time ; they understand the 
 propriety and convenience of rules; they use the materials 
 they have in hand with more judgment and economy. They 
 are not perpetually breaking their threads by careless handling, 
 and losing their time to mend them. If their machine gets out 
 
 Fifth Report of the Secretary of the Board of Education, p. 
 
15 
 
 of order, they can perhaps contrive to mend it, without taking 
 up the time of the overseer. And these things, I believe your 
 better experience will avouch me, have all their parallel on a 
 farm. Master and man, mistress and milkmaid, will all do 
 their work the better for the knowledge they have gained, and 
 the habits they have formed, at school. And so the intelli¬ 
 gence and vigor of the Massachusetts cultivator ought to prove 
 themselves more than a match for the mere Boeotian fertility 
 of Pennsylvania land. 
 
 Again ; agriculture ought to flourish in Massachusetts be¬ 
 cause of the density of her population. We number more 
 than a hundred inhabitants to the square mile, more than any 
 other State in the Union, and more than twice as many, I be¬ 
 lieve, as any State out of New England. What gave this ad¬ 
 vantage to Massachusetts ? Clearly and certainly, the superior 
 intelligence, character, cultivation, and habits of her citizens, 
 enabling them to produce more means of living within the 
 same space, and causing them to constitute a peculiarly eligible 
 community to live with and among. And these causes, in 
 continued and increased operation, ought to produce the same 
 effect still more manifestly, and the effect in turn ought to 
 react beneficially on them. We have not too many people in 
 Massachusetts for good cultivation. On the contrary we have 
 not nearly enough ; and so far as we have a more dense pop¬ 
 ulation than other States, so far we are better oft' than they in 
 respect to our capacity for agricultural wealth. Massachusetts 
 could support two millions of people on her soil, — I do not 
 know but I might say, three millions, — in more abundance 
 than she supports her eight hundred thousand now. /The great 
 secret of European success in agriculture is stated to be 
 “ much labor on comparatively little land.” In England, there 
 are three hundred inhabitants to the square mile. In Holland, 
 there are nearly four hundred, the agriculture of the latter 
 country, on account of the need of dyking and draining, being 
 carried on with great labor-and expense. But the fields and 
 pastures reclaimed from the salt sea are all a garden, where 
 nature spreads out to the traveller’s eye the promise of the rich 
 recompense she has in store for the intelligent industry of 
 man. 
 
16 
 
 When we have learned to apply as we ought to this all- 
 important interest the intelligence, activity, and skill of which 
 we have such an abundant supply, then there will no longer be 
 or seem any need for the brothers who have been brought up 
 together on a farm to disperse to the ends of the earth seek¬ 
 ing their fortunes, because the old homestead is not large 
 enough to give them all a living ; — engaging in trade, in which 
 ninety-five out of every hundred fail, always under circum¬ 
 stances of temptation, always with great distress, if they have 
 proper feelings, and quite too often with dishonor and shame, 
 — or wandering aw’ay to some wild region of the West, to be¬ 
 gin life in a state of society a hundred years behind what they 
 leave, afar from friends and kindred, and the blessed associa¬ 
 tions of natal soil, away from the sound of the church-going 
 bell, from the school-house, the library, the lyceum, the social 
 village circle, renouncing for themselves and those who are 
 to come after them the privileges, and honor, and joy, that 
 belong to the happy spot of their birth-place, turning their 
 back on their patrimonial share in all that has made the noble 
 Commonwealth illustrious in time past, and all that, if hopeful 
 auguries do not deceive, is to illustrate her more and more in 
 time to come. 
 
 Under existing circumstances, I incline to think that the 
 most valuable man, — the best citizen, — Massachusetts has 
 to show, is the farmer who teaches his three or four sons each 
 to raise as much from their share of the family estate as 
 their parent raised from the whole. It is speaking within 
 bounds to say, that a more careful and skilful cultivation would 
 accomplish this result in the average of the farms of Massa¬ 
 chusetts. England has tripled or quadrupled her bread-stuffs 
 within about the age of man. Why should not Massachusetts 
 multiply her products in the same ratio ? J The last thirty 
 years of peace, — an unprecedented period in the history of man 
 for the temple of Janus to be shut, — have given opportunity for 
 talent and ingenuity to be turned from the arts of destruction 
 that plague the race to the arts of production that bless it, 
 and the inventions and improvements of this happy period have 
 been for the benefit of the cause of agriculture as much as any 
 other. Your Association, though the oldest county society 
 
17 
 
 in the Commonwealth, still dates within the century; but it has 
 lived long enough to witness and aid the most important im¬ 
 provements, and I find it stated by your committee on farms 
 of last year, that “ farming in general is now going ahead with 
 greater speed in Middlesex, than at any former period within 
 the eighteen years ” that individuals of the committee have 
 served./Let it come, or let it approach, among us to the 
 result I have indicated, and what vast, untold blessings would 
 it diffuse ! What a new strength would it give to domestic and 
 social ties ! What a new stability would it impart to pur¬ 
 suits and character ! With w r hat a stimulus would it act on 
 the inventive powers ! How would it enlarge the general 
 tvealth ! How would it push forward a genuine civilization, — 
 simple, elegant, and Christian, — by giving it the advantages 
 of a numerous community, and at the same time keeping it 
 pure and healthy by country occupations, and safe from the 
 vitiating influence of the hot city crowds! 
 
 Farmers, your children, generally speaking, have capacity 
 enough for usefulness to themselves and others. God has be¬ 
 stowed it. You can give them education enough. A wisely 
 provident ancestry has taken care of that. You can give 
 them land enough, if you will but teach them to think and to 
 make it so. I repeat it, I know no more honorable object for 
 a right-minded farmer to propose to himself, than to teach his 
 sons, by economy, and by improvements learned by exper¬ 
 iment and observation, or from books, each to get a comfort¬ 
 able living on his portion of the paternal acres ; just as the 
 Roman farmer, in the classical story, portioned ofF one daugh¬ 
 ter after another on a full share of his vineyard, reserving for 
 himself only as much as he gave to each one, and yet contin¬ 
 ued to produce just as much as when he possessed the vdiole. 
 Such a farmer is a good economist; he is laying up the best 
 resource for his old age, in keeping his children about him, 
 with their affectionate society. He is a good parent, for he 
 provides for those who look to him the best chances of re¬ 
 spectability and happiness. He is a good patriot, for he does 
 his part towards making the community stable, well ordered, 
 prosperous, and safe. Am I told that I speak without expe¬ 
 rience on this matter ? I do not speak with the experience of 
 3 
 
a farmer, but I do with that of a life of more than fifty years, 
 including some observation on the ups and downs of those who 
 began that life with me. And that experience teaches me, 
 calculating the chances of life, to regard the skilful tiller of the 
 /ground as enjoying far above the average share of the pros¬ 
 pects of real respectability, competency, and happiness. 
 Length of days is in the right hand of that primitive occupa¬ 
 tion, and in its left hand sufficient riches and true honor. The 
 returns made under the authority of the Commonwealth, for 
 the year 1845, in relation to vital statistics, give to the agricul¬ 
 turists an average of thirteen years longer life than any other 
 ocfcupation. And as for that practical wisdom which is the 
 gray hair unto men, and that unspotted life which is the most 
 desirable old age, let one fact suffice by way of illustration of 
 the moral influence of turning over the soil. The master of 
 the Boston House of Correction, who has had all sorts of sub¬ 
 jects under his clianre, and among them, I fear, a sprinkling of 
 professional gentlemen, says that never yet did a single garden¬ 
 er come into the custody of his four walls. 
 
 Gentlemen, whoever is sincere in any proposal is disposed 
 himself to set an example of what he recommends. Suppose 
 we every man of us undertake to do our own part towards 
 making Massachusetts the garden of America. Who would not 
 help to do this, too, for Massachusetts ?—the most privileged 
 community, I believe in my sbul, that that bright sun looks 
 down upon, long marked by travellers from abroad as the 
 bright spot of this nation, and in all essentials of human wel¬ 
 fare better off than any out of the country, that may excel it 
 in the refinements of an elaborate and fastidious civilization. 
 Who would not wish to help decorate her with the crowning 
 grace of bearing every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and 
 good for food ? Our part will have to be done within the 
 limits of this county. Suppose we every man of us under¬ 
 take to do our part towards making Middlesex the garden of 
 Massachusetts. We shall not have to begin at the beginning. 
 Nature has made a magnificent beginning for us ; and the skill 
 of many of our fellow-citizens has already made great advances 
 in perfecting the work. Where are the valleys that smile 
 more genially on the bright waters that part them, than those of 
 
19 
 
 our Charles and Merrimack, our Concord and Nashua, our 
 Sudbury and Assabet, our Mystic and Malden ? Without 
 disparagement to other towns in the Commonw ealth, in Mid¬ 
 dlesex or out of it, we have perhaps a township in this coun¬ 
 ty, our Marlborough, as fertile as any, — and another, our 
 Framingham, as well cultivated as any, — within the fair bor¬ 
 ders of Massachusetts. We have the land that waits, and will 
 promptly reward our labor with its teeming growth. We have 
 the men, at the rate of not fewer than a hundred and twenty or 
 thirty to the square mile, with their strong sinews and their 
 intelligent minds, to turn it to good use ; and we have in 
 abundance those patient and well-trained dumb servants in a 
 lower order of creation, who help us break it up, and who 
 give back for us to each coming harvest part of the nutriment 
 which it yielded to them in the last. We have more horses, 
 neat cattle, and swine, we raise more potatoes and Indian corn, 
 and make more butter, than any other county, one excepted, 
 that of Worcester. We cut more hay than any county except 
 two, those of Worcester and Berkshire. As to milk and 
 honey, the delights of the chosen land, we collect more than 
 six thousand pounds of the latter, and of the former we send 
 to market nearly three times as much as any other county. 
 We raise more fruit than any other, and more than twice as 
 many esculent vegetables. And for nursery gardens, what 
 more is to be said than that the paradises of Winship and War¬ 
 ren, of Hovey and Kenrick, of Hyde and Stone, and I know 
 not how many others more or less like them, are within our 
 
 Let this go on, and how we will make our Middlesex a 
 name and a praise ! I said just now, suppose we every man 
 of us undertake to do our part towards this result. But I said 
 ibis in my haste and inconsideration. Every man of us may 
 do his best, and still we shall fail, unless every woman, too, 
 lends her aid. The gentle but effective agency of woman 
 cannot be spared out of any sphere of honorable endeavour. 
 As of other spheres, so she is the inspiring and regulating 
 spirit, the tutelary genius, the guardian angel, of the farm. If 
 the husband, father, and brother are to go out to the field with 
 the jocund, elastic spirits which double the strength of the 
 
hands for labor, they must be dismissed at early morning, and 
 welcomed at eve, with the affectionate smiles of sister, daughter, 
 and wife. They must come home to a well-kept dwelling, 
 and gather to the sober recreation of a neat and plentiful 
 board ; and they must look back and forward through the week 
 to Sabbaths refreshing to the heart and soul through the blessed 
 communications of domestic intelligence and love. Take care 
 of this,— daughters of Middlesex, wives, sisters, — and if 
 there be any other name tender enough to be named along 
 with these, — take care of this, — rather, I should say, con¬ 
 tinue to take care of it as you have done heretofore,—and 
 yours shall deservedly be a full half of the praise of all that the 
 sterner power of man shall accomplish to enrich and beautify 
 our home. 
 
 And so, fellow-citizens, we will add one object more of lib¬ 
 eral curiosity to those which the intelligent stranger comes in 
 quest of to our neighbourhood. Is he in search of the won¬ 
 ders of machinery and manufacturing skill ? Already he turns 
 his steps, before all other places, to our Waltham and Lowell. 
 Is he a student of history, — is he an American patriot, — and 
 do the battle-fields of liberty attract his pilgrim step ? He will 
 scarcely do better than to climb the famous hill of our Charles¬ 
 town, or to come where we have come to-day, to the old 
 bridge of Concord, and fill his mind with the sublimity of he¬ 
 roic thought. Would he see a pattern college, and, gathered 
 around it, a company of scholars not unknown to fame ? If he 
 does not stop at our Cambridge, he may be likely to go further 
 and fare worse. Is he a connoisseur in railroads ? When he 
 has rattled (glided, rather) over our Lowell and Fitchburg, 
 he may be satisfied for life with that kind of sight-seeing, on 
 the principle that every greater contains in itself the less. 
 Would he see, in this new America of ours, a rival of the old 
 Roman aqueducts ? We will conduct him, two or three 
 years hence, to the arches of our Cochituate. Has he cooled 
 his summer draughts in London or Calcutta with lumps of 
 frosty crystal, and would he see in what busy laboratories of 
 nature the refreshing alchemy was done ? We will take him 
 to the vast roofs that line the margin of our delicious Fresh 
 Rond, and point him to the capacious granaries where we store 
 
21 
 
 the rich crop of our winter harvest. Would he look at the 
 herds and flocks from a thousand hills, that have been diligent¬ 
 ly made to cover their own ribs thick, that they may next clothe 
 the ribs of man ? He must give us a market Monday morning 
 at our Brighton. Has he a taste for the princely villas where 
 prodigal art and wealth have seconded most happily the prodi¬ 
 gality of nature ? He must spend the afternoon with us at our 
 Watertown and Waltham. Does he know what true greatness 
 is, and would he look at a spot where some of the farmers’ 
 boys were nurtured, whose name has become a synonyme for a 
 better than royal munificence to worthy public objects ? We 
 will take him to the homestead of an old soldier of Bunker 
 Hill, now gone to his sacred rest in our Groton. Would he 
 seek a spot where most tranquilly and profitably he may med¬ 
 itate on the everlasting loveliness of nature, and the short date 
 of the greatness, the passions, and the labors of man ? Let 
 him lose himself in the close embowering groves and monu¬ 
 mental splendor of our Mount Auburn. Would he turn from 
 these to the scenes of man’s most vigorous activity, and look 
 at once at the most graceful structure of man’s art, and the 
 wonderful vehicle of his enterprise and courage ? The ship¬ 
 yards of our Medford invite him to witness that attractive spec¬ 
 tacle in its most elaborate perfection. Has he an eye for the 
 beauty of inferior animated nature, and a sensible estimate of 
 the vast utility of its beneficent agency for man ? The Ten 
 Hills stock will yield him a genuine holiday. And does he say, 
 at the end of all, I will now look at the farms in this extraor¬ 
 dinary neighbourhood ; surely, the lands cultivated by men of 
 this mould must be a charm to the eye and the mind. Farmers 
 of Middlesex, we will take care that he shall not be disap¬ 
 pointed in that either. We will take care that he shall not need 
 to be at the expense of travelling out of our county limits, to 
 see the best of every thing that is to be seen anywhere. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, pardon me yet a word more, and, if it seems u - 
 to be in a preaching strain, pardon it to the old and fixed habits 
 of life of him who addresses you. Cultivate the farmer, while 
 you cultivate the farm. Cultivate the farmer, that you may the 
 better cultivate the farm ; and do the same thing for yet higher 
 purposes. The time has quite gone by, when scholarship was 
 
22 
 
 a profession. There are scholars, men of sense, knowledge, 
 and accomplishment, in all professions and all walks ; and 
 sometimes the most brilliant lights break out in some unexpect¬ 
 ed orbit. Our Franklin was a printer’s boy ; our Godfrey, a 
 glazier ; our Rittenhouse, a watchmaker ; our learned black¬ 
 smith is even now greeted by the applause of Europe ; and the 
 farm-houses have constantly supplied, and are constantly supply¬ 
 ing, in their manly nurslings, a great proportion of our highest 
 names in learning. The farmer is already a cultivated man. 
 ' My little experience of public life, which has been in the halls 
 of our own legislature, has brought me well to the knowledge of 
 that fact. I have there seen farmers among the most effective 
 debaters. They brought to the work minds trained in the 
 trusts of our towns, those firm, sagacious, well ordered democ¬ 
 racies, which did the great work of the country in its revolution¬ 
 ary crisis, and have been doing it ever since. But the farmers 
 make many more good speeches than they utter. Time and 
 again, the farmer supplies the facts, suggests the arguments, fur¬ 
 nishes the sense, which orators more voluble and self-possessed 
 produce with vast applause. In another way they make good 
 speeches which they do not pronounce. I have made some 
 speeches, such as they were, and I know by experience the 
 power which the silent hearer’s eye and ear exerts over the de¬ 
 bater’s tongue ; how the expression of countenance with which 
 the intelligent, plain man listens will rebuke shallowness, pa¬ 
 rade, pretence, and all forms of nonsense, and compel the speak¬ 
 er to speak to the point; — and if that is not helping materially 
 to make a good speech, I confess I know not what it is. 
 
 Cultivate the farmer’s mind. “ As ye abound in every 
 thing, in utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, see 
 that ye abound in this grace also ” ; see that ye “ abound yet 
 more and more, in knowledge, and in all judgment.” The 
 theory and the practice of our institutions is, that the people 
 are the rulers ; and the justification of the theory, and the hap¬ 
 py application of the practice, require that the rulers should be 
 men of sagacity, intelligence, and information. After all, the 
 mass of the people everywhere are tillers of the ground, and, 
 whatever advantages may be allowed to other positions, the 
 farmer possesses some eminent privileges for realizing the ideal 
 
23 
 
 of our form of government, and presenting the truest specimen 
 of the simplicity, the independence, the refinement, and the 
 force of republican virtue. Let the Massachusetts farmer, 
 in all that dignifies humanity and makes life happy, pure, gen¬ 
 erous, and useful, be the pattern farmer of the Union. Do 
 you endeavour that the Middlesex farmer shall be the pattern 
 yeoman of Massachusetts. Take libera] and thoughtful care 
 of your common schools. Who can tell the good that is ac¬ 
 complished by those fruitful nurseries of all that is capable, and 
 worthy, and honorable in man or woman ? Who can calculate 
 the increased good that would be insured by every improve¬ 
 ment in their management and condition ? Who can compute 
 the immeasurable blessings they dispense over the country, fur¬ 
 nishing the young freeman with those resources and principles 
 which make him that wise and honest man who is “ the noblest 
 work of God ” ? Take care of you r churches ; consecrate your 
 family altars ; reap and glean, to the last sheaf, the treasures of 
 priceless wisdom in your Bibles ; rear up the hopes of the next 
 generation in the health and life giving “ nurture and admoni¬ 
 tion of the Lord.” What is man without close ties to his 
 Heavenly Parent ? What is there fair in human intercourse, 
 what is there firm in the fabric of human society, but what 
 religion has bestowed ? 
 
 Husband for yourselves and yours your winter evenings, 
 and your other opportunities of profitable leisure. The time 
 has been when books, that is, when the companionship and 
 communications of the highest minds, were within the reach 
 of only a privileged minority. A parental government has now 
 well provided for that want. A man now bearing one of the 
 highest names in letters which the country boasts has told me, 
 that, when first the worth of knowledge broke upon his mind, 
 the only food for it accessible to him in the scanty resources 
 of his neighbourhood was a torn copy of Gulliver’s Travels, 
 and an odd volume of Addison’s Spectator. These he read 
 over and over again, and the charm of style which then fas¬ 
 cinated his mind planted the seed which has since sprung up 
 into such a magnificence of growth. Among us, no such peril 
 of famine to an aspiring mind can ever again occur. Four 
 years ago, our Commonwealth, with a liberality never more 
 
24 
 
 judiciously bestowed, took measures for placing a small but 
 well selected library within two or three miles of every hearth¬ 
 stone in Massachusetts. You need not envy now any man’s 
 advantages of intellectual intercourse. You need not covet 
 the society of the gifted and accomplished minds of the time. 
 For every farmer, when he sits down after the labors of the 
 day, with wife and sons and daughters around him, may call 
 the highest minds of all ages, past and present, to the quiet 
 communion of the settle by his kitchen fire. He may bid 
 Shakspeare, and Milton, and Bacon, and Locke, and Chan- 
 ning, and Prescott, welcome to his simple home, and they will 
 sit down and converse with him, and give him their best 
 thoughts, for as many hours as he can spare from repose.* And 
 every one who has had the experience of a life of mere study, 
 and opportunity to compare it with a life of labor and action, 
 can tell how much more valuable is such well economized 
 leisure, after the day’s vigorous work abroad, than the tasks of 
 a nervous and thought-jaded mind, and with what a greedier 
 appetite, and a more just and appreciating taste, the instructive 
 volume is devoured, when it is taken up as a recreation from 
 out-door business and bodily toil. 
 
 Fellow-citizens, I have used too much of your time. I 
 pray you forgive me this wrong. The subject is a vast, an ex¬ 
 citing, and a profitable one, and such as may excuse some lo¬ 
 quacity. I have still left many things unsaid that were in my 
 thoughts. May the God of the bounteous harvest which now 
 smiles around us make us duly grateful for his munificent pro¬ 
 visions ! And may he from whom all good counsels, all holy 
 desires, and all just works do proceed, stimulate us, one and 
 all, to do what we may, in our several spheres, towards accom¬ 
 plishing our work, increasing our usefulness, blessing those who 
 are dependent on us, honoring and enriching our parent Com¬ 
 monwealth, serving our beloved country, profiting our day and 
 generation, and helping on our race ! 
 
 * In one of Dr. Channing’s discourses is a train of remark, from which, I 
 believe, part of this language is borrowed. But I have it not at hand to 
 compare. Let this be an acknowledgment of the plagiarism.