AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE DINNER OF THE HAMPSHIRE, HAMPDEN, AND FRANKLIN AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, AT NORTHAMPTON, OCTOBER 9, 1851. [In reply to a complimentary toast proposed by W. O. Gorham, Esq., the Secretary of the Society.] I NEED not assure you, Mr. President, how deeply I am indebted to your eloquent Secretary, for so kind and complimentary an introduction to the yeomanry of old Hampshire. I am not at least, I hope I am not altogether a stranger to them. I have visited their lovely valley, and climbed their beautiful hillsides, in other years. I have made the personal acquaintance of many of them, on other occasions and amid other scenes. With not a few of them, as you well remember, I was associated long ago in the Legislature of our own Commonwealth. With more than one of them I have been more recently and more closely connected in the councils of the nation. Wherever I have met them, I have found them true men, trusty counsellors, patriotic citizens, faithful and cherished friends. I rejoice to recognize so many of them before me at this moment, and to have such an opportunity of renewing the assurances of our mutual regard and respect. I rejoice to see them on their own ground, in the midst of their fellow-citizens, with their wives and daughters by their side, and surrounded by so many evidences, both of immediate enjoyment, and of permanent prosperity and happiness. Sir, it has been my fortune to be born and bred in a city; and I am not insensible to the advantages which are to be found in the varied institutions, in the compact neighborhoods, and in the general movement and activity of a large and wealthy metropolis. I never, certainly, can find it in my heart to regret my relations to Boston. I am bound to her by a thousand ties of old association, of present interest, and of personal obligation. But never yet have I found myself on the hills or the plains which lie along the courses of your charming river, without feeling that your lot, above that of almost all other Massachusetts men, has been cast in pleasant places, and that you have, indeed, a goodly heritage. Certainly, Sir, if there be a spot on our not over-fertile New England soil, if there be a spot beneath our not always clement New England sky, on which a man may find a more than ordinary security for the enjoyment of health and happiness, of competency and comfort, of contentment and independence, of vigor of body and vigor of mind, it must be somewhere along these verdant meadows, or upon these sunny slopes of the Connecticut; it must be somewhere among these "banks and braes of your Bonnie Doon." And, let me add, if there be a spot beneath the sun, where virtue, and piety, and integrity, and patriotism, have already found some of their brightest examples and purest models, it is here, amid the homes of your Stoddards and Edwardses, your Williamses, and Hawleys, and Strongs. But, Mr. President and Gentlemen, you are not here to listen to empty compliments to the beauties of your scenery, the advantages of your condition, or the character of your distinguished men, dead or living. This is a farmers' festival; and having gone through with the exhibitions and competitions of the day, you have come together for a friendly interchange of opinions, and a frank comparison of views, on the great subject of agriculture. And a great subject it certainly is, and one worthy of the most careful examination and study of our ablest and most enlightened minds. Nay, Sir, it demands such examination and study, and it must have them, unless we are willing that our posterity shall reap the bitter fruits of our ignorance and neglect, and shall have nothing else to reap. For myself, I have little pretension, I am conscious — no man here has less to give advice, or pronounce an opinion, upon any question pertaining to the practical cultivation of the soil. If I were called upon, at this moment, certainly, to put my hand to the plough, I am sensible that I should stand greatly in need of Prouty's No. 40, which has recently obtained the premium at the World's Fair, and which the Chairman of one of your Committees has described to us, this morning, as being made "to go alone." But I have been deeply impressed with some of the views which have been presented on this occasion, and on other occasions, by the experienced and scientific gentleman* who has addressed us at the church this morning, and I cannot forbear giving utterance to one or two of those impressions, in a few plain and unpretending remarks. No one, I am sure, who examined the Agricultural Report, which was issued from the Patent Office at Washington, last year, could fail to have been struck with the suggestions it contained in regard to the gradual deterioration and impoverishment of the American soil. No one can have forgotten the idea, so forcibly presented by the author of that Report, that, for want of more system and more science in the cultivation of our lands, we are rapidly exhausting the soil of its productive qualities, and are in danger of leaving it to those who come after us, des. titute of all those ingredients and elements upon which they must rely for bread. I fear, Sir, that we have all been too long accustomed to think of the soil we cultivate, as an imperishable and indestructible thing. And it is true, that by no acts and by no omissions of ours can we annihilate the solid ground beneath our feet, or remove from its strong foundations the sure and firm-set earth which we inhabit. It is true that the same hills and valleys, the same mountains and plains, which are before us and around us now, will remain fixed and steadfast long after we are buried in their dust, and will be trodden by generation after generation of our successors. But it is not less true, that the productive elements of the soil are as perishable as the plants and fruits to which they give life and nourishment. It is not less true, that the fertilizing ingredients of the earth stand as much in need of renewal as the seeds of our annual harvests; and that unless we pay back to the ground, seasonably and punctually, the full * Dr. Daniel Lee, of the United States Patent Office. amount that we draw from it, there will be a fearful accumulation of arrears to be settled by our posterity. Our neglect cannot, indeed, change the substantial forms of nature. We cannot dissolve the Sugar-Loaf. We cannot shake Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke from their rocky thrones, and remove them into the sea or the river. But we can destroy their verdure and strip them of their foliage. We can make their glorious beauty a fading flower, and leave them, and the valleys below them, so exhausted of their natural elements of production and fertility, that when our children go to them for bread, they shall only find a stone. Why, Mr. President, it has been estimated by your able orator, that it would require, in round numbers, not less than a thousand millions of dollars, judiciously expended, to restore to that richness of mould and strength of fertility which they originally possessed, the one hundred millions of acres of land in this country, which have already been partially exhausted! And how can we ever speak of our farms as being free from mortgage, or our country from a national debt, while such a state of things exists, and is going on! Sir, if there be truth, or any approximation to truth, in this calculation, how vastly important has it not become, that our agriculture should henceforth be conducted on more scientific and systematic principles! How vastly important has it not become, as an act of sheer justice to our children and our children's children, and lest they should rise up in judgment against us, as having robbed them of their rightful inheritance, that the practical farmers of our land should be instructed, should instruct themselves, should in some way or other become informed, as to the true nature of the soil they cultivate, and should learn by what processes and appliances, by what manures and fertilizers, it may be kept in a condition-not merely for furnishing food for themselves but for supporting that long succession of generations which, we hope and believe, are destined, by God's blessing, to maintain for a thousand years to come, a populous, and prosperous, and glorious Commonwealth, on the very spot on which it was first founded by our fathers. "Plant for posterity," was the saying of the old Roman phi losopher and patriot, when he was setting out trees at eighty years of age. And there is something delightful in the idea of our children sporting in their childhood, and reposing in their old age, beneath the spreading branches which our hands have reared for them. But "manure for posterity" may well be the more homely, but far more important maxim of the provident and patriotic farmers of the present day. In feeding your children, take care that you are not starving your grandchildren. Let every landlord, every proprietor of acres, remember and realize, that though the fee-simple of his farm is in himself, and though no court of law or court of equity can sustain an action against him for strip or waste, he yet holds the soil in strict moral trust, and is accountable in the eyes of men, and at the bar of God, for the degree of fertility or barrenness which he may bequeath to his descendants. And most especially, Mr. President, is such a sense of obligation and responsibility needed in our own Commonwealth. In other and newer and larger States, there may be less immediate call for such precautions. They have a richer original soil to draw upon, and much of it is still a virgin soil. They have a greater extent of territory to expatiate in and experiment upon. They may go on cropping from acre to acre, like bees from flower to flower. If they exhaust their farms to-day, to-morrow they may repair "to fresh fields and pastures new." One may almost apply to them the language of one of those charming melodies of Moore's, so familiar, I doubt not, to many of my fair hearers "They may roam thro' this world, like a child at a feast, But we have no such ample territory or luxuriant soil. We are one of the oldest, and one of the smallest States in the Union. Our lands are limited in extent, and more limited in fertility. Poor at the outset, they have been long under the plough. And unless intelligence and science shall do something, and something seasonable and effective, to supply the deficiencies of nature, and arrest the progress of exhaustion, we shall leave little |