The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1867-10-24
! A Most Admirable address.

The Richmond papers contain full
reports of an address delivered by
Hon. Henry A. Wise, before the
Pomological and Horticultural So
ciety of Richmond, which is pro-
nounced one of his finest efforts.
Certainly its perusal will justify this
eulogium, and the following extracts
will give our. readers fair sample of
the address. They bear entirely upon
the agricultural interests, not only
of Virginia, but of. every other
Southern State. We earnestly com
mend them to the attention of our
readers, with the hope they will be
profited by q perusal:
This state of desolation of lands
and of destitution and corruption of
!aborers, demand, / repeat, q total.
fundamental change in our economy
of land culture and of land labor.
And we must accommodate ourselves
to these changes, extreme as they
are. They are not embarrassments
merely, which suggest propositions
to be accepted or rejected at discre-
tom but they are the stern, stub
born facts and fates Of revolution al
ready accomplished, and entirely re-
versing the order of everything in
our whole past life and economy.
The results are upon us, and the ne
cess1ty OF the case knows no law, but
to compel us to make the most of an
already realized and inexorable CON
dition. Hard, harsh, sudden, sur
prising and shocking as this may at
first seem, yet there is great consola-
tlon In the hope that this very neces-
sity may we'll compensate MS by fore
ing us into improvements, which but
for it we would never have been
driven to adopt. The war has shown
that our previous, past condition was
not only not the best, but not for our
good at ALL
We mast apply and practice the old
and now precious aphorism:
"Iemp0ra mutdntur et nos nautn,,,u
cnnatllis. The great questions are:
What should be our changes with
the changes of the times
How change?
The first change absolutely neces-
sary to be made in agriculture, is
from the plantation to the farming
System. This requires q new mode
OF culture, new laborers, new imple-
ments, new crops, more various, on
q smaller scale, more contracted and
concentrated, requiring more skill,
more care, and yielding the most
profit on the smallest space. The
plantation demanded thousands of
acres, and hundreds of hands of
manual labor, operating on the
largest space, to produce raw mate
rial for food and clothing, requiring
but little skill with under hands to
make the crude crops-habitually
and ignorantly wasteful-give to
one idea alone, here tobacco, there
wheat. elsewhere cotton or rice, or
corn or sugar-monotonous in rou-
t1ne-worked by slaves, unskillful.
unthrifty and costly, and not in
terested in success or profit-with no
applied science or art beyond that of
an uneducated overseer, and literally
driving away from its sections, both
f-om tcwns ard county, "th:e st-ccr
man of America" the master me,
chanic; nursing the pleasures, pas
times, luxuries, ease, extravagance
and dissipation of proprietor, scatter.
lingand segregating and making sparse
the white population of the country.
utterly repellipg the class of bold
working. yeomanry, the proudest
Doast OF any land; and weakening
the lands for defensive war.
The speaker went on to explain of
wnat consisted farming. 1t requires.
SAID he. skill as we'll as labor; it must
be watchful to waste nothing ont Of
the small product; its manipulator