ard one step at least. Before our Government takes hold of the
condition of agriculture in the United States as a state measure, and
even after it comes up to the hour when we shall have a Secretary of
Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce in the cabinet, after the manner
of France, Italy, and Prussia, the farmer himself, individually, must
work some important and radical changes in his social and industrial
polity, and prepare himself for the generous assistance of a wise and
beneficent Government.

The farmer supports every other material interest. Standing upon the
primary strata of civilization, he bears on his broad hands and stout
shoulders the 'weight of mightiest monarchies.' Daniel Webster calls him
'the founder of civilization.'

Is it at all necessary that the spring in the hills should be cool,
clear, and pure, and wind its way over a granitic soil, through green
meadows, beneath the shading forest, into a sandy basin, to form a
beautiful lake in a retired, rural retreat? If so, is it at all
necessary that the moral virtues of the founders of society should be
duly educated, cultured into the soul, leaving the impress on generation
after generation, of honor, of order, of manliness, of thrift? The
condition of the farmers is the postulate by which the sagacious
economist will foretell the future prosperity of the nation they
represent. This is what the American farmer should have presented to him
from every stand-point. It is lamentable that this vocation should be so
sadly represented by the most of those who are engaged in it.

This occupation of farming is the noblest work which can engage the
attention of man. Off of his farm, whether it be large or small, the
farmer, by diligent and intelligent cultivation, can gather whatever he
or the world needs; what the world needs for its manufactures and
commerce; what he needs for his personal comfort, pleasure, or the
gratification of his natural tastes;--the two crops which furnish the
daily bread to the material and spiritual nature of man;--the green
fields, than which nothing is more beautiful; the sweet song of birds,
their gay plumage, their happy conferences, their winged life, making
melodious the woods and fields; the sky, ever above us, ever changing,
grand at morning, magnificent at evening, hanging like a gracious
benediction over us; the flowers, ever opening their petals to the sun,
turning their beauty on the air, to delight, instruct, and bl