Concord Register

FOR THE CONCORD REGISTER.

It was not without some degree of surprise that I saw, in a late number of the N. H. Patriot, an editorial article on the subject of Representatives to Congress, in which it was stated that Mr. Harvey, in nomination for Merrimack, was the only practical farmer on the list. If the writer intended to confine his remark to the list got up at the June caucuses he is probably correct. It is worthy of remark that the candidates there nominated—and nominated, too, by the aid of persons who have been loudest in declaiming against professional men, and in vindicating the rights of the independent yeomanry of our State—should have been, with but one exception, men who are supposed to have but little sympathy or feeling in common with the farming interest. That the editor did not intend to confine his remarks to the list before mentioned is, however, very evident. How then, in speaking of practical farmers, did he happen to overlook the names of LIVERMORE and WEBSTER—professional men, and well educated men, to be sure—but the best practical farmers in any part of the State? I venture to say that few men in Grafton County take a deeper interest in the cultivation of the earth, and the various branches of husbandry, than Judge Livermore, and few are more practical as well as scientific in their researches and experiments.

With respect to Mr. Webster, I hazard nothing in asserting that he has, from his youth up, been a thorough farmer—not confining himself, it is true, to manual labor, but making husbandry a science as well as an art—and doing more for the promotion of it, by reading and reflection, and the employment of persons under him whom he could direct to advantage, than any common farmer, unaided by such resources, could hope to effect in a century. Mr. Webster's father was a practical farmer. He himself was educated as such, "after the straitest of the sect," until he arrived at manhood. I have yet to learn that his acquisitions since have unfitted him for that honorable designation. I have good authority for saying, that nowhere, in the county, are there such visible marks of improvement—such triumphs of science, and art, and industry, over many natural obstacles—as on his lands. On but few, if any, farms, are there discovered better crops, or better marks of husbandry.

I am far from undervaluing the pretensions or claims of Mr. Harvey. He is before the people as a candidate, fairly enough for aught I know, and so are the other gentlemen whom I have named. The people are to judge for themselves, and to select the most suitable men for office, without reference to caucus nominations, or local attachments, or any hereditary or family successions. There are no party questions which now agitate the community—and there should be no sacrifice of the public good to promote the selfish views of any one man, or body of men. My object in this communication is not to insinuate aught against Mr. Harvey, but to place the pretensions of each of the gentlemen named on fair grounds, and to aid in doing away the impression that there is but one true and loyal representative of the farming interest in nomination before the people.

A YEOMAN.