AGRICULTURE.*

Ir is generally admitted, that since the establishment of cattle shows in this country, the condition of our agriculture has been manifestly improved. Before that time, our husbandmen seemed to want those means of improvement, and encouragements to action, which are enjoyed by their fellowcitizens engaged in several other pursuits. Instead of living together in large towns, they are scattered over the surface of the country. Instead of having two thirds of every newspaper filled with advertisements or information relative to their occupation, as is the case with the merchants, the most they could promise themselves was, that the weight of an enormous vegetable should be faithfully recorded; and the memory of some calf with two heads or six legs be handed to posterity. They held no conventions and assemblies, like the clergy and physicians; were not brought together, like the lawyers, at the periodical terms of court, to take counsel with each other for the public good; and seemed not to possess, in any way, the means of a rapid comparison and interchange of opinion and feeling.

Since the establishment of the cattle show of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, and those of the several county societies, this state of things has been greatly amended; and to a considerable degree, I imagine, through the agency of these institutions. The cultivators of the soil are now brought together. Their agricultural improvements, their superior animals, their implements of husbandry, the products

* Address delivered at Brighton, before the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, 16th October, 1833.

of their farms, their methods of cultivation, are all subjects of inquiry, comparison, and excitement. The premiums proposed have given a spring to the enterprise of the cultivators; not on account of the trifling pecuniary reward which is held out, but through the influence of a generous spirit of emulation. The agricultural magazines and newspapers take up the matter in this stage, and give all desirable notoriety to what is done and doing. The knowledge of every improvement is widely diffused. Increased prosperity begins to show itself, as the reward of increased skill and knowledge; and thus the condition of the husbandman is rendered more comfortable and more honorable.

A word of exhortation has become, by usage, a part of the ceremonial on these occasions; and it has been thought not unseasonable, that the husbandmen's festival should afford some brief opportunity for the expression of opinions on important interests connected with their pursuits, and for the inculcation of the sentiments which belong to the vocation, standing, and usefulness of the farmer. But you have just left the exhibition grounds, where you have been eye-witnesses of the dexterity of our ploughmen; where you have admired the display of the strength and docility of the well-trained draught cattle; where you have examined the animals brought forward as specimens of the improvement of their various races. You have not, of course, retired from this animated and interesting scene, - thronged as it is by the assembled yeomanry of the commonwealth, the living masters of the great art of agriculture, to come together here with the view of gaining additional knowledge of matters of practical husbandry. This, I am well persuaded, at all events, is not expected from me, and I shall have fulfilled the object for which I have been invited to appear before you on this occasion, if I shall succeed, in any degree, in bringing home to the minds of those whom I have the honor to address, the importance and respectability of the occupation of the farmer, and especially in this country.

In the first place, then, let us say a word of the importance of the pursuit of the husbandman. What rank does agricul

ture hold, in the scale of usefulness among the pursuits of men in civilized communities? We shall arrive at a practical answer to this question, by considering that it is agriculture which spreads the great and bountiful table, at which the mighty family of civilized man receives its daily bread. Something is yielded by the chase, and much more by the fisheries; but the produce of the soil constitutes the great mass of the food of a civilized community, either directly in its native state, or through the medium of the animals fed by it, which become, in their turn, the food of man. In like manner, agriculture furnishes the material for our clothing. Wool, cotton, flax, silk, leather, are the materials of which nearly all our clothing is composed; and these are furnished by agriculture. In producing the various articles of clothing, the manufacturing arts are largely concerned, and commerce, in the exchange of raw materials and fabrics. These, therefore, to a considerable degree, rest on agriculture as their ultimate foundation; especially as it feeds all the other branches of industry.

If we suppose the population of this state to consume in food and clothing, on an average, half a dollar a week each, it will give nearly fifty-two millions of agricultural produce consumed in Massachusetts in a year. In addition to this, is all that is consumed by the domestic animals, and all that is raised and not consumed, but exported, or otherwise given in exchange for articles of value, which are preserved and accumulated.

Agriculture seems to be the first pursuit of civilized man. It enables him to escape from the life of the savage, and the wandering shepherd, into that of social man, gathered into fixed communities, and surrounding himself with the comforts and blessings of neighborhood, country, and home. The savage lives by the chase-a precarious and wretched independence. The Arab and the Tartar roam with their flocks and herds over a vast region, destitute of all those refinements which require for their growth a permanent residence, and a community organized into the various professions, arts, and trades. They are found now, after a lapse of

four thousand years, precisely in the same condition in which they existed in the days of Abraham. It is agriculture alone that fixes men in stationary dwellings, in villages, towns, and cities, and enables the work of civilization, in all its branches, to go on.

Agriculture was held in honorable estimation by the most enlightened nations of antiquity. In the infancy of commerce and manufactures, its relative rank among the the occupations of men was necessarily higher than now. The patriarchs of the ancient Scripture times cultivated the soil. Abraham was very rich in cattle, in gold, and in silver. Job farmed on a very large scale; he had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses. In Greece, the various improvements in husbandry, the introduction of the nutritive grains, and the invention of convenient instruments for tilling the soil, were regarded as the immediate bounties of the gods. At a later period, land was almost the only article of property; and those who cultivated it, if they were freemen, were deemed a more respectable class than manufacturers and mechanics, who were mostly slaves. Among the Romans, agriculture was still more respected than among the Greeks. In the best and purest times of the republic, the most distinguished citizens, the proudest patricians, lived on their farms, and labored with their own hands. Cato the Censor was both a practical and scientific farmer, and wrote a treatise on the art; — and who has not heard of Cincinnatus? When the Sabines had advanced with a superior army to the walls of the city, the people, although at that period greatly disaffected towards the patricians, demanded that Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, one of that unpopular class, should be created dictator; that is, that all the laws, and the power of all the magistrates, should be suspended, and despotic authority vested in his hands. Livy, in relating the occurrence, cannot help breaking out in the exclamation, that "it is well worth the attention of those who despise every thing on earth but money, and think that there is no place for honor or virtue except where wealth abounds. The sole hope of the Roman empire, (adds he,)

in this the day of her extremity, L. Quinctius, was cultivating, at this time, a farm beyond the Tiber, which still bears his name, and which consisted of four acres. There he was found by the messengers who were sent to hail him as dictator, leaning on his spade, or holding his plough. After having raised an army and defeated the enemy, he laid down, in sixteen days, the dictatorship, which he was authorized to hold for six months, and on the seventeenth day, got back to his farm."*

In the progress of wealth and luxury in the Roman empire, the class of husbandmen sunk from their original estimation, in consequence of the employment of vast numbers of slaves on the estates of the great landholders. Still, however, there was a large and respectable class of rural tenantry, who cultivated at the halves the lands of the rich proprietors; and the free and independent citizens who tilled their own small farms, like the great men of better days, never wholly disappeared till the overthrow of the Roman empire by the invasion of the barbarous tribes.

On the destruction of the Roman empire, the feudal system arose in Europe; a singularly complicated plan of military despotism. In this system, the possession of the land was made the basis of the military defence of the country. The king was the ultimate proprietor, and apportioned the territory among the great lords, his retainers. Those who cultivated the soil were serfs, the property of their lord, and were bought and sold with the cattle which they tended. Sir Walter Scott, in describing, with his graphic pen, one of this class of the former population of England, after depicting the other peculiarities of his costume, adds a trait which speaks volumes as to their condition "One part of his dress only remains, but it is too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any opening, and soldered fast round his neck; so loose as to form no impediment to his breathing; yet so tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting by the use of the file.

* Liv. Lib. III. § 26.