Alexandria Gazette

ADDRESS.
At the Philadelphia Agricultural Exhibition.
BY NICHOLAS BIDDLE, Esq.

Gentlemen:--We are assembled to witness our first exhibition since the recent legislation by the State. Our Society while engaged with all its own resources in improving our agriculture, appealed to the Legislature, as consisting mainly of farmers; and asked that, while so many millions were expended in the transportation of our productions, something should be given to assist in rendering those productions themselves more abundant and more valuable. Accordingly a law was passed placing every year, at the disposal of the Society a sum of fifty dollars for each member of the Legislature for the city and county of Philadelphia, to be paid out of the taxes to be raised within the city and county. This, though small in amount, is important from its example; nor, in entering upon the first enjoyment of it, should we omit our thanks to the Legislature for this mark of regard for the farming interest, to the members from the city and county who liberally supported it, and more especially to those members of this Society to whose exertions we owe the success of this application, among whom it would be great injustice not to name George W. Roberts, R. T. Potts, and Capt. Thomas Yates, but in an especial manner are the acknowledgements of all farmers due to Mr. James Gowen, who is always in the front rank where public spirit or private liberality is needed.

The Society have thought that no employment of the additional means confided to them would be so useful as to bring the farmers together, to exhibit the best specimens of their industry; and by small but honorable premiums to encourage a generous competition in every branch of farming production. The prizes for the best crops must be decided at a later part of the season. But the exhibition of farming stock and farming implements is now before you; and it is made my duty to add something appropriate to the decision.

This I do cheerfully, and what I shall say will be very plain, very practical, and, as you will learn with pleasure, very short. My purpose is to say a few words about the real condition of farming in Pennsylvania; its natural advantages; its acquired means; and then suggest such improvements as may make our farms more productive.

There are perhaps few portions of the earth more favored by Nature than Pennsylvania. Her soil is excellent and various--while even the parts least adapted in themselves for agriculture furnish the best encouragement to it; for the hills which reject the plough are filled with coal and iron, which collect large masses of the people to be fed by the farmers. Her climate is a happy medium between the long winters of northern regions, which close the earth for so many months against farm labor, and consume so much of its produce in carrying the farm stock over long months of idleness, and, on the other side, the unvarying heat of southern latitudes, often unhealthy and unproductive, where both man and cattle degenerate. In this climate almost every production may be naturalized, so that in point of soil and seasons, and variety of productiveness, Pennsylvania is distinguished.

These natural advantages she has also the means of improving by artificial means; for the humus stone, so great an element in farming, is found everywhere, in great abundance. Plaister of Paris is obtained easily, and low prices, from her neighbor, New York; the large cities furnish vast supplies of animal manure, while on the other side of the Delaware, lies a great belt of green sand, erroneously called marl, an original deposit of the ocean, where among bones of extinguished races of animals, and relics of a submerged world, there is brought up this sand, highly useful even in its natural state: and if mixed with lime, as it should be, of greater efficacy.

The implements of husbandry come next in order, and these we have of the very best kind; much better than similar implements in Europe, lighter, more easily handled, and there are one or two in common use with us, such for instance, as the horse rake, and that giant instrument, the cradle, which are unknown or unused abroad. In truth, our people have had so much to do with comparatively small means, that their ingenuity has been tasked to invent the most efficient instruments, and to make the most active use of them. Thus there are two words in almost all languages, and well defined in most dictionaries, but of which Europeans have scarcely any idea, and these are the axe and the plough. To cut down a tree, the great business of American settlers, is a strange event to a European farmer. And then it may make us smile to see, as we may on the continent of Europe, at the present time, a whole drove of horses--I have myself actually seen eight in a single plough--and sometimes the whole quadruped force of the farm, three or four courses, and perhaps a bull or two, with the aid of several horses, toiling slowly through the great work of turning up the sod--nay, even in some parts of England, at this moment, may be seen six large horses, with two full-grown men, returning to the field after having ploughed, during the day, three-quarters of an acre, where one of our ploughmen, with a pair of horses, would have got through an acre and a half.

From the implements, let us turn to our stock of animals.

And first of our Horses: Beginning with the highest blooded stock, I think it probable that the United States possess quite as good a race as there is in Europe. The prevailing opinion is that the Arabian horse is the original of that animal, I doubt the historical facts but if it be so, he is the parent stock of the horse, much as the father of all apples is the crab, which has been sweetened by cultivation into the bell-flower. Undoubtedly the Arabian has improved the English horse--has given him finer sinews, more compact bones, and greater intelligence, till the cross has become avowedly the first of his kind. The truth is, that a race is but a quick succession of long jumps, and the little light Arab is out-jumped by the gigantic stride of the stronger, larger, longer-legged English horse, and would distance him on any course in Europe. Indeed, the very first Arabian imported into England two centuries ago, called the Markham Arabian, was constantly beaten; and my impression is, that no Arabian horse ever did win a race in England.

The belief of our breeders is, that whatever good there may be in the Arabian is exceedingly slow in showing itself: that he has already given to the English horse all he can give, and that it is on the whole safer to adhere to the highest bred English stock, rather than risk its degeneracy by any inferior mixture. Our blood horses, therefore, come directly from England; and it is rather odd that the King of England's stables, while there was a King and he had stables, furnished the highest priced horses for republican America. Of the comparative estimation of the English and Arabian horse, we have lately seen a striking example. The Imaum of Muscat sent to the President of the United States two Arabian horses, which, from the character of the giver, we are bound to presume were of the highest class. These horses were sold at public auction, and no one could be found to give more for them than six hundred and fifty dollars for one, and six hundred and seventy-five for the other. Now, in the same neighborhood where these were sold, are very spirited breeders, who would not buy these Arabians at even so low a rate, but who had actually bought from the stables of the King of England, at the price of twenty-five thousand dollars, Priam, one of whose colts is in the exhibition here. Even as between the English breed and our own, the impression on this side of the water is, that for some time past the tendency of English breeding is leggy, and that the descendants of the English stock, in this country, have more endurance, more bottom for long heats, than their English ancestors. The question whenever it is tested, will be decided perhaps by a few seconds. This style of horse, although the use to which he is generally applied, is out of the way of the farmer, is yet very interesting to us, for his good qualities all come down through the inferior races; and the Godolphin, to which the English horse owes much of his superiority, was actually a cart horse in Paris.

Our ordinary race of farm horses is extremely good. The warmth and variableness of the climate have settled down the stiff and heavy frame of the European horse, and given us a race of quick, alert animals, admirably fitted to second the activity of the farmer himself.

So with respect to Cattle, we have almost every variety, and the best of all the varieties. The emigrants often bring their best and favorite animal; the passenger vessels bring cows to give milk during their voyages, and be then profitably sold here, and these are generally of the highest kind: commerce imports from every quarter, the animals which will pay best, and are therefore the best at home: and spirited breeders have gone into the English markets and brought over some of the highest priced animals. The result is, that we have a great accumulation of stock of every description. There are the Alderneys, with their rich milk, itself a cream. The Ayrshires, copious givers of milk strongly inclined to butter, with forms fitted for the butcher. The Devons, an ancient race, brought by the first settlers of New England, and indicating their descent by their strong resemblance to the improved Devons, with which our stock has been of late years abundantly recruited. Fitted, by their milkiness, for the dairy; by their delicate flesh, for the knife; by their quickness, for the plough; they claim to be second to no other race; and if second to any, only to the short-horned Durham, which is so familiar to us all as to require no description, which undoubtedly now unites the greatest mass of suffrages in its favor, as combining the qualities of abundant milk, of easy fattening, of early maturity and of excellent food more than any other race of horned cattle.

Of Sheep, too, we have all the varieties. The Leicester, with their early fitness for the knife, and their large carcasses and large wool; the Merino, for its smaller yield of rich wool; the Southdown, excellent for both wool and carcass; and, finally, we have a less known breed coming into reputation; it is the Tunisian, or broad-tailed sheep, originally sought mainly for the carcass, but, having proved itself very hardy, when acclimated, when crossed by other breeds, so as to acquire a finer wool, it may become a standard stock among us. Nor are we less favored in Swine. We have all the breeds: among others peculiarly our own is what is called the Chester county breed and the Berkshire breed just coming into great and deserved estimation among us. Even the common breeds that run about, without knowing their extraction, are often admirable. I remember well that the Pennsylvania Quaker farmer, Jacob Brown, Commander-in-chief of the American army during the last war, told me how much he was struck by the beauty of the hogs which he saw running about Philadelphia, and I have often had occasion to admire them.

Of all these various animals we have specimens now before us which we may all examine, and, if we desire it, obtain them at reasonable rates--and no one can doubt the real economy to a farmer of possessing these improved breeds. An inferior animal takes as much trouble and as much food as a good one, and then the care and the expense are often thrown away upon cattle that will give neither milk nor beef. How many stunted milk cows do we see who may be said to go dry all the year round--how many steers who, after emptying a whole corn crib, at last, in the spring, look like the crib itself, all ribs without, and hollow inside. But crossing and training have created animals who turn at once into milk or beef--every thing we put into them--who give plenty of milk if you want milk, plenty of fat, if you desire beef; and who, coming earlier into the dairy or the market, save a whole year's expense of feeding. I hope, therefore, that we may profit by the present opportunity of improving our stock, and encourage the spirited breeders who place the means of doing it in our power.

Nor are the productions of Pennsylvania less numerous than its animals. The great staples are wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, and, above all, Indian Corn--a plant not estimated in Europe, but one of the most valuable presents which the new world has made to the old--worth almost all others in the extent of its yield and the variety of its use--with a stalk ten or fifteen feet high, every inch of which is useful in the barn-yard, and a grain which to men supplies a variety of healthful and delicious dishes, and to cattle is the quickest fattener, while it gives the last exquisite flavor to their flesh.

Having thus spoken of the advantages which we Pennsylvania farmers enjoy, I proceed to the less agreeable, but more profitable inquiry why our farmers are not so productive as they ought to be: And I make the comparison between Pennsylvania and England because I think England, on the whole, the best farming country in Europe; and our English friends must understand that, while we amuse ourselves occasionally with some of their peculiarities, we pay them the highest compliment we can, by proposing them as the constant models of our farming. Now, why is it that, with all the natural advantages in our favor, the English farmers beat us? I will tell you what I think of it.

In the first place, we do not do justice to our own profession. Farming is not liked, either among the young people, because it is considered a lonely exile from gaiety--or among the calculating, because it is thought unproductive. This last is, I think, a total misapprehension: and, as I regard its correction essential to our success, I venture to say that farming ought to be more profitable in Pennsylvania than in England. The common notion is that the high price of labor in Pennsylvania makes farming unproductive, and the opinion is repeated without examination, till at last it is generally believed. Now the productiveness of farming, like the productiveness of every other occupation, depends on the expense of raising an article and the price you can get for it when it is raised. These expenses are the rent of the land, the taxes, manure, the prices of laboring cattle, of laboring implements, and of laboring men.

The land which can be rented in America for two or three dollars could not be rented in England under ten or twelve dollars an acre--so that already the land itself costs three or four times as much. When you have got possession of the land, the tax-gatherer and the tithe man soon make their appearance, and take from the farmer fifty-three per cent. on his rent. Here there are no tithes, and the tax, out of the immediate vicinity of the city improvements, would scarcely be one-tenth of the English tax--so that while on an English farm of two hundred acres the rent and charges would be about $3,000 The same rent and charges would here be 700 Making at once a difference of $2,300 Next, all manures are cheaper in Pennsylvania--cheaper in themselves, and rendered more cheap by the facilities of transportation Laboring horses are about one-fourth cheaper in Pennsylvania: and, moreover, the work which two horses do in England is generally here done by one. Cows, too, are much cheaper here. Laboring implements are cheaper and better, the wood being so much lower-priced and durable. Of all these elements of work, there remain only laboring men, who are cheaper in England; they are cheaper by about 30 or 35 per cent: and even say that wages are 50 per cent. higher in Pennsylvania than in England. But, then, although the nominal rate of wages is higher, yet you actually get more work done for the money. The climate gives you more long working days than can be relied upon in the climate of England, where out-door work is necessarily much suspended, and the American laborer works better, for the very reason that he is better paid. And the proof, which seems decisive, is, that although money wages are higher here, piece-work, contract-work--whether to dig a canal or reap a field--is done cheaper in America. And, accordingly, one of our most intelligent Philadelphia county farmers, Mr. Walker, an Englishman, always declared that his farm-work was done twenty per cent. cheaper in Pennsylvania than in England. But supposing it to be higher--labor is only one of the elements--for we have seen that the rents are three or four times as high--manures, implements, cattle, all dearer--and far overbalancing any difference of wages, were it even real.

Let us now see what are the prices obtained for what is raised. Wheat is higher in England--flesh markets are higher. But wheat forms only one fourth of the crop; and, on the other hand, the great staple wool, is dearer here; potatoes are twice or thrice as high here; and, therefore the English compete with us in our own market; turnips, cabbages, all vegetables generally dearer; so that, after all, taking the average, farm produce is not higher, or very little higher in England, while all the materials of raising it are much lighter there; so that, on the whole, farming ought to be as lucrative in Pennsylvania as in England.

With regard to wages, it may sound strangely, yet I believe it to be true, that the real interest of all farmers is, that wages should be high, and for this reason. A laboring man is not a mere machine--a human poor-box--into whose mouth is put a daily number of cents, never to reappear, but a living being, with wants and desires, which he will not fail to gratify the moment he possesses the means. If he can earn only a scanty pittance, just enough to keep him alive, he starves accordingly--his food bread and water: half fed, half-clad, a wholly untaught animal, with a useless mouthful of carnivorous teeth: but if wages increase, he instantly employs them in comforts, in clothes for himself and family, and as he rises in the scale, ventures on the taste of meat. He employs a tailor, a shoe-maker, a hatter, a butcher, and these in turn purchase the materials of their trade from the farmer himself. The laborer becomes thus a customer of himself, and the payer of other customers, and the farmer receives back, with abundant interest, the difference which he advances in the first instance between high wages and low wages. It is for this reason that one of our shrewdest farmers used to say, Yes, give our laborers good wages and they will buy our beef. Thus, too, the bounties of Providence go round beneficent circle; and, after making the laborer better fed, better taught, in short, a better man, the farmer himself is richer for the very benefits he dispenses. Depend upon it, there is no surer sign of national prosperity than high wages; and God grant that for many a long year it may be the lot of our countrymen, who subsist by the labor of their hands, to work well, to be paid well, and to live well.

And now we come to the real reason why our crops do not equal those of England. It is, that our farms are all too large--too large for the means we employ in farming them. Agriculture is the only pursuit I know, where the owner does not employ his capital in his business. He rents or buys a large farm, and then has nothing left to stock it with. He might as well rent a large store without goods enough to fill a single corner of it. In England, it is supposed necessary, before renting land, that the tenant should have a working capital, of thirty or forty dollars an acre, to employ. It is calculated that, besides lime and other enriching substances, the cost of the mere animal manures applied to the soil of England amounts to three hundred millions of dollars; being more than the value of the whole of its foreign commerce. Yet the grateful soil yields back with interest all that is thus lavished upon it. And so it would do here, if we would only trust the earth with any portion of our capital. But this we rarely do. A farmer who has made any money spends it not in his business, but in some other occupation. He buys more land when he ought to buy more manure; or he puts out his money in some joint stock company, to convert sunshine into moonshine: or else he buys shares in some gold mine or lead mine. Rely upon it our richest mine is the barnyard, and that whatever temptations stocks or shares may offer, the best investment for a farmer is live stock and ploughshares.

Another defect of our farming is, that we do not raise sheep enough. Some years since, we were among the first to import the merinos, and to indulge in the wildness of that extravagance, until we had secured vast numbers of these high-priced animals, without any previous accumulation of roots to sustain them, and then found that we should have to purchase expensive food for them. That at once disenchanted us. It was then seen that not only in palaces but in sheepfolds "a favorite has no friends." To enthusiasm succeeded disappointment and disgust, and these unhappy victims were sacrificed to the knife, for no other crime than their appetite. We have not yet overgrown this horror--but it was entirely our own fault. There are many parts of the State where sheep would take care of themselves, in the woods, during the greater part of the year, and the root crops would furnish a cheap and wholesome support during the remainder.

And this leads to the great improvement which, of all others, we most need, which is the multiplication of root crops.

No soil can withstand a succession of grain crops; and, instead of letting it lie fallow in order to recruit from its exhaustion, as was the old plan, the better practice now is, to plant in the same field a crop of roots. These draw their nourishment from a lower region than the grain crops do; they derive a great part of their food from the atmosphere by their large leaves, which at the same time shelter the soil from the extreme heats; they provide a fresh and juicy food for cattle during the winter, thus enabling us to keep a large stock, which, in addition to the profit of them furnish abundant manure with which to return to the grain crops. Now this should be our effort--more roots, more manure, then more grain. We cannot much err in the choice of these roots. Common turnips, Swedish turnips, mangel worzel, are all good, though in various degrees: but perhaps the sugar-beet will be found the best of all--not for the purpose, at least at present, of making sugar--but as the most nutritious food for cattle, and the most milk-producing vegetable for cows in winter. These root crops will grow abundantly; and what I should especially desire to see is, that we would confine in our long and mild autumns, and see if they would not yield us a crop of roots planted immediately as the grain harvests were removed, so as to be ready by winter for the cattle.

Another thing which we should strive to amend is, the unfarmerlike and slovenly appearance of our fields. Clean cultivation is like personal neatness to an individual--a great attraction to a farm; but who can see without mortification our fields of Indian corn or potatoes, just as they are verging to maturity, out-topped and sifted by a rival crop of weeds, which seem waiting with impatience for the removal of the real crops, when they and all their seed may take exclusive possession of the ground! The rule of farming should be, never to let any thing grow in our fields which we did not put there; and the value as well as the beauty of the crop would more than pay the expense of removing these noxious intruders.

Nor do we pay sufficient attention to our gardens. We too are often content with a small enclosure, where a few peas and beans and a little salad are left to struggle with a gigantic family of weeds--not to speak of the frequent inroads from the pigs--and what can be saved comes at last on our tables the scanty companions of the masses of animal food which form almost our exclusive subsistence. For such a wilderness how easy would it be to substitute the cheap and wholesome luxury of many vegetables which would grow without the least trouble, and, while they gave variety to our tables, would diminish our excessive and expensive use of animal food!

The same want of neatness pervades the exterior of our dwellings. We look in vain for the trim grass plat, the nice border, the roses, the climbing vines, and all the luxuriance of our native wild flowers. These cheap and easy works, which seem trifles, make up the great mass of enjoyments; they are the innocent occupations of the young members of the family--the elegant luxury of them all; and they impress even a passing stranger with a sense of the taste and ease of the farmer.

In fruits, too, we are deficient. Our climate invites us to plant, and there is scarcely a single fruit which will not grow in the open air, and all of them prosper with a little shelter. Undoubtedly there are insects which infest them; but these, care will exterminate. Undoubtedly some species are short-lived, but it is easy to provide a succession; and even many productions which we used to think uncongenial to our climate will succeed if we will only try them. For instance, I am satisfied, from my own experience, that every farmer may have his patch of grapes quite as readily as he can his patch of beans or peas. He has only to plant his cuttings, as he would Indian corn, at a sufficient distance to work them with the hoe harrow They will live through the winter without any covering, and with less labor than Indian corn, because the corn requires re-planting every year, while the vines will last for a century. He will thus provide a healthful, pleasant fruit for his family use, or a profitable article for the market.

I was about to name one more improvement but I hesitate about it--I mean the substitution of oxen for horses on farms. All the theory is in favor of the ox. He costs little, works hard, he eats little, and when we have done with him he is worth more than when we began; whereas a horse costs much eats much, and when he dies is worth nothing Yet, after all, it will be difficult to bring the ox into fashion. He has a failing which, in this country, is more fatal than madness to a dog-- he cannot "go ahead;" and it seems a severe trial for our impatient American nature to creep behind an ox-plough, or to doze in an ox-cart. And then there is a better reason, in small farms, where both oxen and horses cannot be kept, for the preference of the horse. The ox can do only farm work, and is utterly useless for the road. He is of no benefit to the farmer's family. We can neither make a visit with him, nor go to church with him, nor go to court with him; and if the present immense political assemblies are to continue in fashion, they would be like the buffalo meetings in the prairies, and it would be more difficult than it now is in political conventions to find out whose ox gored his neighbor's

There was one caution which I would have ventured to offer some years ago--against the indulgence of expensive habits of living and an undue preference of things foreign over the fruits of our own industry--but which, I rejoice to think, is no longer necessary. Long may it continue so. Simplicity and frugality are the basis of all independence in farmers. If our mode of living be plain, it belongs to our condition; if our manners seem cold, or even rough, they are at least natural, and their simple sincerity will gain nothing by being polished into duplicity. Though Italian mantel pieces and folding-doors are indispensable to happiness in cities, they are not necessary to the welcome of country hospitality, If a finer gloss be given to foreign fabrics, let us be content with the simpler dresses which come from our own soil and our own industry; they may not fit us quite as well, but, rely on it, they become us far better; and if we must needs drink, let us prefer the unadulterated juice of our own orchards to all exotic fermentations --even to that bad translation into French of our own cider, called champagne.

I have spoken of farms and farming; let me add a few words about the farmer. The time was, when it was the fashion to speak of the Pennsylvania farmer as a dull, plodding person whose proper representative was the Conestoga horse by his side; indifferent to the education of his children, anxious only about his large barn, and when the least cultivated part of the farm was the parlor. These caricatures, always exaggerated, have passed away, and the Pennsylvania farmer takes his rank among the most intelligent of his countrymen, with no indisposition for improvements beyond the natural caution with which all new things should be considered before they are adopted. But an unwillingness to try what is new forms no part of the American. How can it be, since our whole Government is a novelty: our whole system of laws is undergoing constant changes; and we are daily encountering, in all the walks of life, things which startle the more settled habits of the old world, When such novelties are first presented, the European looks back to know what the past would think of it--the American looks forward to find how it will affect the future: the European thinks of his grandfather,--the American of his grandchildren. There was once a prejudice against all these things--against what was called theory and book farming--but that absurdity has passed away. In all other occupations, men desire to know how others are getting on in the same pursuits elsewhere; they inform themselves of what is passing in the world, and are on the alert to discover and adopt improvements. The farmers have few of these advantages; they do not meet at exchanges to concentrate all the news of commerce; they have no factories, where all that is doing among their competitors abroad is discussed; no agent to report the slightest movements which may affect their interests. They live apart, they rarely come together, and have no concert of action. Now this defect can be best supplied by reading works devoted to their interests, because these may fill up the leisure hours which might otherwise be wasted in idleness or misemployed in dissipation; and as some sort of newspaper is almost a necessary of life, let us select one which, discarding the eternal violence of party politics, shall give us all that is useful or new in our profession. This Society has endeavored to promote such a one in the Farmers Cabinet, a monthly paper, exclusively occupied with the pursuits of agriculture-- where we may learn what is doing in our line over all the world, at so cheap a rate that, for a dozen stalks of corn, or a bushel of wheat or potatoes, we may have a constant source of pleasing and useful information.

I think, however, that we must prepare ourselves for some startling novelties in farming. We were taught in our youth to consider fire and water as the deadliest foes. They are at last reconciled, and their union has produced the master-power of the world. Steam has altered the whole routine of human labor it has given to England alone the equivalent in labor of four hundred millions of men. As yet, commerce and manufactures alone have felt its influence, but it cannot be that this gigantic power will long be content to remain shut up in factories and ships. Rely upon it, steam will before long run off the track into the fields, for, of all human employments, farm-work is at this moment the most dependent on mere manual labor. Be not, therefore, surprised if we yet live to see some steam-plough, making its hundred furrows in our fields, or some huge engine, like the extinct mammoth, roving through the Western forests, and mowing down the woods, like a cradler in the harvest field. Wild as this seems, there is nothing in it stranger than what we have all witnessed already, When Fulton and Oliver Evans first talked to us about the steamboat and the railroad, we thought them insane, and already we enjoy more than they ever anticipated in their most sanguine moments. One of these applications of steam-- the raising of water for agriculture--I have already attempted, in my own small way. You know that the greatest enemy of our farming is the drought of midsummer, when all vegetation withers, and the decaying crops reproach us with suffering the magnificent rivers by their sides to pass away. In the southern climates of the old world, men collect with great toil the smallest rills, and make them wind over their fields--the hand-bucket of Egypt, the water-wheel of Persia, all the toilsome contrivance of mongol labor, are put in requisition to carry freshness and fertility over fields not wanting them more than our own. With far greater advantages, absolutely nothing has yet been done in that branch of cultivation; may we not hope that these feeble means of irrigation may be superseded by steam, when a few bushels of coal may disperse over our fields, from our exhaustless rivers, abundant supplies of water.

All these improvements which may adorn or benefit our farms are recommended to us not only by our own individual interests, but by the higher sentiment of our duty to the country. This is essentially a nation of farmers. No where else is so large a portion of the community engaged in farming: no where else are the cultivators of the earth more independent or more powerful. One would think that in Europe the great business of life was to put each other to death: for so large a proportion of men are drawn from the walks of productive industry and trained to no other occupation except to shoot foreigners always, and their own countrymen occasionally: while here, the whole energy of all the nation is directed with intense force upon peaceful labor. A strange spectacle this, of one, and one only, unarmed nation on the face of the earth! There is a broad and wild struggle between existing authorities and popular pretensions, and our own example is the common theme of applause and denunciation, It is the more important, then, for the farmers of this country to be true to their own principles. The soil is theirs--the Government is theirs--and on them depends mainly the continuance of their system. That system is, that enlightened opinion and the domestic ties are more stable guaranties of social tranquillity than mere force, and that the government of the plough is safer, and, when there is need, stronger than the government of the sword. If the existing dissensions of the old world are to be settled by two millions of soldiers, all ours will soon be decided by two millions of voters. The instinct of agriculture is for peace--for the empire of reason not of violence--of votes, not of bayonets. Nor shall we, as freemen and members of a domestic and fireside profession, hesitate in our choice of the three great master influences which now rule the world--force, opinion, and affection--the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the band-box.