AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT TAUNTON, MASSACHUSETTS, BEFORE THE BRISTOL COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, OCTOBER 15, 1852.

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. 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 over-anxious 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 from 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 consumers, 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 we 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.

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 frost? How 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 dis

pense 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 "Mécanique Céleste," 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 more noticeable, and few things, I am sure, more gratifying to us all, than the increased interest 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 forest-trees. 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 community, 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 every 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 three-fourths 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? What 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.