AGRICULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES.

A SPEECH MADE AT THE BANQUET OF THE UNITED STATES AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, BOSTON, 26 OCTOBER, 1855.

I KNOW of few things, Mr. President, better calculated to take the courage out of a man, than to find himself rising on such an occasion and in such a presence as this, with the full knowledge that he has been advertised, in a hundred bills and broadsides, for a fortnight beforehand, as being relied on to furnish one of the formal addresses for this crowning banquet.

For one, I cannot help feeling that the brute beasts, who are on exhibition with us, have had something of an unfair advantage over their human yoke-fellows in this respect. They have been permitted to come comparatively unconscious into the field. They have been privileged to exhibit their points and show their paces without any solicitude as to the expectation which they may disappoint or gratify. The most ruminating animals among them all have never spent a moment, I venture to say, in considering what sort of a figure they should cut, or what sort of an utterance they should find. They have chewed their cud in undisturbed complacency, even while these uncounted thousands of spectators have been crowding in to gaze upon their qualities. They have, certainly, stood in awe of no reporters. They have pondered no periods, unless, indeed, it be that welcome period which shall put an end to their strange confinement, and send them quietly back to their pleasant pastures or their comfortable stalls. Enviable condition of insensibility and immunity! Theirs is a sort of Know-nothing party, which I could be well content to join, even though it should consign me to "a lodge in some vast wilderness!" "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

Sir, this is, indeed, a wholly unaccustomed spectacle for this precise locality. So many yokes on Boston Neck, which, in 1775, if I remember right, could not bear even one yoke patiently! It is a novel sight within the limits of any large and populous city,

these flocks and herds and droves of cattle by which we are encompassed! One is well-nigh constrained to exclaim, in the words of the old ruler of Israel, "What meaneth, then, this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" But the question, unlike that which was. addressed to the rebellious Hebrews, is happily susceptible of a most innocent and agreeable answer, and one which need involve us in no apprehension of either divine or human displeasure.

This great congress of animals, convened from all quarters of the Union, are here on no errand of insubordination or disorganization. They have come in no partisan or sectional spirit. They have neither assembled to make a platform, nor to nominate a president. No paramount issues disturb their serenity. They have come for the simple purpose of reminding us of the preeminent importance of agriculture among the arts of life, and of the common interests and objects which should unite and animate the farmers of our whole country, from Maine to California. They have come as the chosen representatives of a thousand hills and valleys, to furnish us with a visible type and illustration of the surpassing magnitude of that mighty branch of American Industry, of which they are something more than mere honorary members, and to impress upon us all a deeper sense of the claims. which it has upon our most careful consideration and attention.

And beyond all doubt, Mr. President, the agriculture of the United States has long ago reached a condition in which nothing less than the collected wisdom of the whole country is required, to devise the best means for securing its future prosperity and welfare. So far, indeed, as mere farming is concerned, so far as relates only to the modes and processes by which the productiveness of the soil may be increased, and the soil itself saved from deterioration, —I do not feel sure that much more is to be accomplished by a National Association than by State or county societies. Even in this view, however, I would by no means undervalue the importance of an organization by which so wide a

comparison of opinion and of experience may be facilitated, and so much of comprehensive information obtained.

But what I cannot but think the peculiarly important province of a National Agricultural Association, is, to present to the contemplation of the country, and of the farmers and of the statesmen of the country, from time to time, some accurate and adequate conceptions of the condition and of the wants of American agriculture; to hold up to the view of the people and of the government a just picture of its magnitude as a whole; to develop and display the mutual relations and dependencies of its different industrial and geographical departments; to unfold its relations to other arts and to other countries; and, above all, to give seasonable warning of any dangers, either from overaction or from underaction, which may threaten the prosperity and welfare of those who are engaged in it.

It is never to be forgotten, sir, that, while so many other nations are bestowing attention upon agriculture in order to prevent their population from starving, our own attention to it thus far is more needed, I might almost say, is only needed, to prevent the waste of our soil, and the waste of our substance, and the waste of our labor, in producing more than we can either eat or sell, or even give away. And we may do well to remember seasonably the wise monitions of the immortal dramatist, when he tells us that "they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing."

The Agriculture of the United States! How much is included in the full significance and import of that phrase! What gigantic harvests! What an army of husbandmen! What a host of housewives and handmaids! What multitudinous swarms of animals! What mountainous heaps of corn and cotton! What myriads of implements! What a measureless breadth of acres !

It is not often that mere arithmetical figures produce any impression or sensation of sublimity. But what can be grander than some of the items in the statistical tables which set forth the agricultural agencies, capacities, and crops of the United States !

Why, sir, two years ago, there were estimated to be within our limits, more than twenty millions of horned cattle, more than

twenty millions of sheep, and more than thirty millions of swine. By the same returns, there were said to have been raised in a single year, one hundred and six million bushels of potatoes, one hundred and ten million bushels of wheat, one hundred and sixty million bushels of oats, sixteen hundred million pounds of cotton, fifteen million tons of hay, and six hundred million bushels of Indian corn! Follow the order of the day, sir, and make a fusion of all these, and what a picture of exuberant fertility do they not present!

But these figures are many of them far below the estimates of the present season. I have somewhere seen our wheat crop for 1855, set down at not less than one hundred and seventy-five million, and our maize or Indian corn, at from eight hundred to one thousand million of bushels! What mighty aggregates are these, and how do they speak to us of the growing greatness and importance of American agriculture, not to ourselves only, but to the whole family of man! How distinctly do they point out to us our destined part in the great economy of human existence ! How emphatically do they proclaim our mission to pour out the rich gifts of our prolific soil over every land,

the naked nations clothe,

And be the exhaustless granary of a world!

Certainly, sir, it is quite time for some national association, or some National Board of Agriculture, to take such figures and such facts under their especial charge, and to consider under what arrangements of internal and external exchanges, by what enlarged facilities of intercommunication, or multiplied divisions of labor, by what additional supply of mouths and markets,these enormous harvests may find an adequate consumption at a remunerating price, so that our plenty may never become our disease, nor our land present the picture of the industrious farmer buried up beneath his own luxurious heaps. Foreign wars will not last for ever, we trust. European crops will not always be deficient. Peace and plenty will soon be seen renewing their horns and diffusing their priceless blessings over the other hemisphere as now over this. All that is temporary and exceptional in the present demand for the products of agriculture will have

passed away. And then we shall more than ever feel the want of some better assurance of prosperity for the farmers than any which rests upon the evils and misfortunes of other people.

Sir, I hail the existence and steady progress of this Society as a pledge that the interests of the great body of American farmers shall hereafter be a chosen and cherished theme for the consultation of wise and experienced men in all parts of the Union, and that our American crops shall henceforth be the subject of some careful ascertainment, and of some systematic disposition and treatment,

"A mighty maize, but not without a plan."

Among the many welcome reflections which the establishment of such an association suggests to us, none is more welcome than that it is the fulfilment of one of the most cherished wishes of the Father of his Country. That great and good and eminently wise man-whose character is itself the noblest product which America has ever given to the world, and whose name and fame grow brighter and brighter, and dearer and dearer to us, with the lapse of years had few things more warmly at heart than the establishment of precisely such an institution.

I cannot but wish that his own loved and lovely seat on the Potomac may one day or other become your permanent headquarters, and your experimental farm. The ladies of Virginia, I perceive, are appealing to their sisters throughout the Union, to aid them in purchasing it; and I would be the last to interfere with any plan of our better halves. But by whomsoever it may be purchased, Mount Vernon must be consecrated to nothing less than a national use, free from all sectional, free from all partisan, taint. And what use is there which so completely fulfils all these requisitions, and which is in such perfect harmony with the career and the character and the known wishes of Washington, and with the genius of the place where his ashes repose, as that which I have suggested? Methinks your Directors would catch something of fresh animation and inspiration for the patriotic work which they have undertaken, if they were gathered from time to time beneath that hallowed roof, and could hold their deliberations around that old chimney-piece, covered with the emblems of agri