Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1858-05-22
NJ | S c Z L L A n Y. .
EDWARD EVERETT ON AGRICUL-
TIRE

The greatest political philosopher and the
most consummate statesman of modern Europe.
| Edmund Burke, who saw further than any of
his countrymen into the cloudy future which
hung over the close of the eighteenth century,
at the meridian of his life, purchased large
farm. 81 have" says he in letter to friend
in that most critical year of English politics,
''just made push with all | could collect of my
own and the aid of my friends, to cast little
root into the country | have purchased about
six hundred acres of land in Buckinghamsh
about twenty four miles from London. 1t is a
place exceedingly pleasant, and purpose God
willing, to become farmer in good earnest"
This his purpose, he carried into effect, and adj
hered to it to the end of his life. Those immor-
tai orations. which revived in the British Senate
the glories of the ancient eoqucn,~ ,aiv,;f-
| tated in the retirement of Beaconsfield; and
there also composed those all but inspired
appeals and expostulations, which went to the
heart of England and Europe in the hour of
their direst peril, and did so much to expose the
deformty and arrest the progress of that god
less philosoph specious, arrogant, hypocriti-
cal and anguinary-which, with liberty and
equality on her lips, and plunder and treason.
i'll her heart waged deadly war on France and
mankind and closed protessed crusade for re-
publican freedom by the establishment of mil
itary despotism
A greater than Burke in this country, our
own peerless Washington, with burden ofpub-
! lie cares upon his mind such as has seldom
weighed upon any other person-conscious.
through considerable part of his career, that
the success not only of the American Revolu-
ton, but of the whole great experiment of the
republican government, was dependant in no
small degree upon his course and conduct. yet
gave throughout his life, in time of peace, more
| of his time and attention, as he himself in one
of his private letters informs us, to the superin-
tendencc of his agricultural operations, than to
any other object. at will not be doubted"
says he, in his last annual message to Congress,
9TH of December, 1860 THAT with reference
either to individual or national welfare, agrcul-
ture is of primary importance In proportion
as nations advance in population and other cir
cumstanccs of maturity, this truth becomes more
apparent, and renders the cultivation of the
soil more and more an object of public patron
age"
"Among the means which have been employed
to this end, none have been attended with great
er success than the establishment of boards
charged with collecting and diiusing informa-
ton, and enabled, by premiums and small pecu-
MARY aids, to encourage and assist spirit of
discovery and improvement" On the 10th of
December, 1899, Washington addressed a long
letter to the manager of his iarms-the last
elaborate production of his pen,-transmittng
a plan. drawn up on thirty written folio pages,
containing directions for their cultivation for
several wears to come. In seven days from the
date of this letter his own venerated form was
"sown natural body, to be raised a spiritual
BODY"
Nearly all the successors of Washington in
the Presidency of the United States, both the
deceased and the living, passed or are passing
their closing years in the dgnifed TRANQUILITY
of rural pursuits One of the most distinguish
plow. Permit me also to dwell for moment
on the more recent example of the four great
statesmen of the North, the West, and the
South, whose names arethe boast and ornament
of the last observation-disclosures Calhoun, CLAY