AGRICULTURE.

Emprovement of Agriculture Essential to the Security of Republican Enstitutions.

THE science which involves the physical laws most open to our investigation, and to which the primeval law of our existence compels us, and the art which precedes all other inventions and whose cultivation leads to plenty and is cheered by health and contentment, are the last which receive the patronage of philosophy or attain the favor of government. Mankind learned the distances and laws of planets, and even the periods of comets before they conceived the mysteries of vegetation; and the fine arts were perfected in ages when agriculture, loaded with the superstition of centuries, was confined to slaves. It may easily be explained why this should have been the experience of other ages and other countries. The powers of government have always been vested in classes or individuals farthest removed from the tillers of the soil; and ambition and pride have sought gratification in conquests and in homage of the fine arts. But it must not, it can not, be so here where the agricultural interest is sovereign, and as it furnishes all the means, so also it rightfully supplies the motives and directs the action of the government. . . . Agriculture appeals to us as republicans, therefore with peculiar earnestness not only by our desire to increase the public wealth, enlarge the public intelligence, and elevate the standard of public virtue; but also by our solicitude to preserve the ascendency of that policy of peace and improvement which is identified with the existence of democratic institutions. Annual Message, 1839.

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The Homestead of the American Citizen should be Exempted from Envoluntary Sale.

I RESPECT all lawful contracts, and I would not unnecessarily interfere with even rigorous remedies which existed when such contracts were made. But it is wise as it is just and humane, to alleviate prospectively the relations between debtor and creditor, Within the last twenty years, imprisonment for debt, a system which had prevailed for more than two thousand years before, has been safely abolished by every state in this Union, and I believe by every commercial nation in Europe. New York, the most commercial state, has with equal safety abolished the rigorous remedy of distress for rent, and has exempted certain portions of estates from liability to sale for debts contracted after such laws were passed. Other states have adopted the policy of protecting the homestead from compulsory sale. A home is the first necessity of every family; it is indispensable to the education and qualification of citizens. Can not society justly withdraw it from the hazards of commercial contracts, and from exposure to the accidents following disease and death? We bestow pensions upon decayed soldiers who have served their country in her wars; we protect such annuities against involuntary assignment; and the policy is as wise as it is generous. But he who reclaims an acre of land from the sterility of nature, and brings it into a productive condition, confers a greater benefit upon the state than valor has often the power to bestow. Sir, all that is movable in property may be used as a security for credits—and that security is adequate to supply all the wants of commerce. The home of the farmer, the asylum of the children of the republic, may be safely reserved and protected. Speech in U. S. Senate, Feb. 27, 1851.

Popular Prejudices against Emprovement of Agriculture Unreason= able and Pernicious.

WHO does not desire that the generation to which he belongs shall be wiser and greater than those which have gone before it? Fellow-citizens, if you would thus distinguish the generation to which you belong, of which you are a part, you must

have a wiser and more enlightened system of agriculture than that of your predecessors. I appeal to the learned men whom I see around me- is the science of agriculture peculiarly difficult to explore and perfect? Quite the contrary. Chemistry, mineralogy, botany, and physiology, the ancillary sciences, have already given up the secrets of the composition of the soil and of the atmosphere, and the laws which regulate the germination and growth of vegetable and animal organisms. What remains seems to be little more than the reduction of truths already known into methodical forms, for the purposes of instruction, with guides to their application under the widely-varying circumstances of soils, climates, and seasons. Notwithstanding these obvious truths, and notwithstanding that agriculture, as it was the first, has also always been the most general pursuit of civilized men, yet it is nevertheless true that it has been, more than all other sciences and arts, neglected. We generally plough, we sow, and we reap, not with enlightened knowledge of the processes we prosecute, but by habit, and with a blind following of customs established before that knowledge had been gained. We suffer disappointments which we might have prevented, and, charging the misfortune to accident and destiny, we perseveringly renew our culture in the same- -I had almost said wilful-ignorance, and at the risk of the same ever-recurring disasters.

Permit me to say plainly and with some emphasis, that this indifference to agricultural science can not be suffered to continue. While commerce, aided by vigorous and well-sustained invention, is reducing the dangers and diminishing the cost of navigation, and thus bringing the similar productions of various nations into competition in common markets, population is crowding on subsistence in many countries, so rapidly as to oblige them to study intensely how to increase the fruits of the earth which constitute that subsistence. The statesmen of Great Britain and continental Europe have already employed science to check the tide of an impoverishing and exhausting emigration. Even, therefore, if we should continue to neglect agricultural improvement, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia, would not. They must improve, are improving, and will continue to improve, agriculture; and if we neglect to follow

ay, and if we fail to keep up with them in that improvement, they will not only exclude us from foreign markets, but will even ultimately undersell us in our own. A pretty figure we should make in that case. This is what they are already doing in manufactures, and by the process I have indicated.

I think that there is no lack of schools and seminaries and professorships, adapted and qualified for advancing and disseminating agricultural science. Our present seminaries, and the teachers of natural science in them, are quite sufficient; and text-books, guides to experiment, and laboratories, are not wanting in the country. What then is wanting? Only pupils. The students in all our seminaries, intent on-not agricultural pursuits, but what are called the learned or liberal professions-rush by the agricultural chair, to attend to instructions in mathematics, rhetoric, and classical literature. Certainly the professor ceases to explore for new acquisitions, when no one will listen to his expositions of what he already has. A desire to communicate to others, is always combined with the passion for the pursuit of knowledge.

Why then are there no pupils? The fault-again I pray you-pardon my boldness-the fault is chiefly with the farmers themselves. A farm, of course, is necessary to him who is to be a farmer. Generally, only farmers' sons have or expect farms, and so they are the class who must supply the candidates for the profession of farming. But the farmers' sons are generally averse from scientific study. There is a general prejudice that agriculture is a simple, easy art or trade, which can be taken up and practised without academic instruction or systematical apprenticeship, and that theoretic precepts serve only to mislead and bewilder.

On the contrary, Nature has left all the human faculties in one sense incomplete, to be perfected by general education and by training for special and distinct pursuits. She has left those faculties not less incomplete, and without adaptation, in the farmers' case than in any other. Her laws are general and inflexible. Brutes only have perfect instincts. Man can do nothing well, and indeed can do nothing at all, but by the guidance of cultivated reason. Notwithstanding admitted differences of natural capacity, and of tastes and inclinations, it is nevertheless

practically and generally true, that success, and even distinction and eminence, in any vocation, are proportioned to the measure of culture, training, industry, and perseverance, brought into exercise. So he will be the best farmer, and even the best woodsman or well-digger, as he will be the best lawyer, the greatest hero, or the greatest statesman, who shall have studied most widely and most profoundly, and shall have labored most carefully and most assiduously.

There is another prejudice even more injurious than that which I have thus exposed. The farmer's son is averse from the farmer's calling. He does not intend to pursue it, and is always looking for some gate by which to escape from it. The prejudice is hereditary in the farmhouse. The farmer himself is not content with his occupation; nor is the farmer's wife any more so. They regard it as an humble, laborious, and toilsome one; they continually fret about its privations and hardships, and thus they unconsciously raise in their children a disgust toward it. Is not this at least frequently so? Is there a farmer here who does not desire, not to say seek, to procure for his son a cadet's or midshipman's warrant, a desk in the village-lawyer's office, a chair in the physician's study, or a place behind the counter in the country store, in preference to training him to the labors of the farm? I fear that there is scarcely a farmer's son who would not fly to accept such a position, or a farmer's daughter who would not prefer almost any settlement in town or city, to the domestic cares of the farmhouse and the dairy.

Whence is this prejudice? It has come down to us from ages of barbarism. In the savage state, agricultural labor is despised, because bravery in battle, and skill in the chase, must be encouraged; and so heroism is still requisite for the public defence in the earlier stages of civilization, and the tiller of the soil, therefore, rises slowly from the condition of a villein, a serf, or a slave. Nevertheless, ancient, and almost universal, as this prejudice is, I am sure that it is unnatural to mankind in ripened civilization, such as that at which we have arrived. Of all classes of men, we practically have the least need of hunters; and we employ very few soldiers, while the whole structure of society hinges on the agricultural interest. A taste, nay, a passion for agriculture, is inherent and universal among men. The soldier