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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
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