The consumption and use of the necessaries and conveniences of life, by 10,000,000 of people, and the demands for the materials of domestic manufactures, cannot fail to afford to every quarter of our Union the means of substantial enjoyment. _Industry_ must take the place of hazardous _Speculation_, and _Frugality_ must succeed _Extravagance_. We shall then be taught to live within our means, and this will easily be accomplished, when we have only real wants, and not those which are, for the most part, artificial and fanciful. We must "eat our bread in the sweat of our faces," and we shall find it the sweetest and most nutritive of any food we have heretofore enjoyed. It may not be accompanied by luxurious and expensive viands; but its associates will be health, peace of mind, and corporeal vigour, ensuring exemplary life and purity of morals.
The foundation of the public prosperity is undoubtedly agriculture. This brings forth all the materials about which other branches of labour are, for the most part, employed, and sustains the workers in every department of the mechanic arts, in their labours. Without it, the earth would be a howling desert: with it, the cultivated world is an artificial Paradise, produced by the labour of Man, who, being doomed to "eat his bread in the sweat of his face," thus fulfils the decrees of Heaven, while he ensures to himself and his race the blessings of plenty, innocence and health. To what a high destiny, then, is the farmer appointed, when to him is committed the art on which the subsistence of his fellow men necessarily depends. His responsibilities are great indeed; and shall he rely only on his individual efforts and limited experience, for the fulfilment of such important duties? No: he should call to his aid the experience, the intelligence, and the scientific as well as practical knowledge, which associations for promoting agriculture are universally found to afford, and thereby add to his own, the experience of those with whom he is associated, and, by joint efforts, produce results to which any one individual is incompetent. The practices, good or bad, which are handed down by his predecessors, are repeated; and little progress is made in improvement by isolated or self-confident individuals.