We have associated, gentlemen, to increase the pleasures and profits of rural labor, to enlarge the sphere of useful knowledge, and, by concentrating our energies, to give them greater effect in advancing the public good. In no country does the agricultural class bear so great a proportion to the whole population as in this. In England one-third of the inhabitants only are employed in husbandry; in France, two-thirds; in Italy, a little more than three-fourths; while in the United States the agricultural portion probably exceeds five-sixths. And in no country does the agricultural population exercise such a controlling political power, contribute so much to the wealth, or tend so strongly to give an impress to the character of a nation as in the United States. Hence it may be truly said of us that our agriculture is our nursing mother, which nurtures, and gives growth, and wealth, and character to our country…. Knowing no party, and confined to no sect, its benefits and its blessings, like dews from heaven, fall upon all.
… Our agriculture is greatly defective. It is susceptible of much improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are too old to learn, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public interests require, because they have no suitable school for their instruction. We have no place where they can learn the principles upon which the practice of agriculture is based, none where they can be instructed in all the modern improvements of the art.
Much injury has been done to the cause of agriculture by sanguine speculations, which have only led to expense and disappointments; but all works on agriculture are not of that character; nor should it be forgotten that theory is the parent of practical knowledge, and that the very systems which farmers themselves adopt, were originally founded upon those theories which they so much affect to despise. Neither can it be denied that systems grounded upon theory alone, unsupported by experiment, are properly viewed with distrust; for the most plausible reasoning upon the operations of nature, without accompanying proof deduced from facts, may lead to a wrong conclusion, and it is often difficult to separate that which is really useful, from that which is merely visionary…. Prudence, therefore, dictates the necessity of caution; but ignorance is opposed to every change, from the mere want of judgment to discriminate between that which is purely speculative, and that which rests upon a more solid foundation.
* * * * *
=Robert Walsh, 1784-1859.= (Manual, p. 504.)
From "Didactics, Social, Literary, &c."
=153.= FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS.
Whatever the impulse to guilt, some suppression or aberration of the reason may ever be alleged and admitted. In this mode, however, sentimentalists might argue or whine away the whole body of crimes and punishments. It is the duty of every true friend of humanity and order, to protest against perverted sensibilities or sophistical refinements, which find warrant or apology for depraved appetites,—for the worst distemperature of the mind, and the most fatal catastrophes,—in natural propension, and unrestrained feeling. Spurious sympathy is a more prolific evil than sanguinary rigor, useless and pernicious as the latter is, in our humble opinion. Public executions do more harm than good,—but are not worse than morbid public commiseration and entreaty for criminals, to whom the real justice of the law has been applied, after fair and merciful trial….
Many of the worst criminals, who, in different ages and countries, have justly suffered ignominious death on the wheel, the block, or the gallows, were men of "extraordinary character," of singular acuteness, of the most decided spirit. To acknowledge this fact is not to applaud their conduct, or admire their general ultimate character….
We have constantly remembered what we early read in the works of Mr. Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or worship splendid wickedness; that, with too many persons, the ideas of justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated with the lustre of genius, the glare of fashion, or the robes of power. Against this species of degeneracy or illusion it has been our uniform endeavor to guard ourselves, and our conscientious practice to warn and exhort others. The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as saints, and hung amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity, or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene.