Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden which was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority which they professed to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent their strength in the threshing barn, Kings guided oxen, and Prophets were summoned from the furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth and tell of things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the law enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by the land which was in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. And it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to us the feeling which universally prevails,—that he alone is aristocratic, has the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has built his earthly tabernacle.
The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known elsewhere; her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very appellations of many of her localities have reference to the beauty and the blessings showered down upon them by the Lord.
Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, the home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine reigned. Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and twenty million bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute which she annually poured into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory could hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the soil at night would be found budding before morning. And this ancient story, I may notice, has been the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes among our Transatlantic cousins.
The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue and use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too, acknowledged the divine influence; and his first public act, as King, was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, charged with watching over the fields, and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove for yearly increase of harvests.
It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that of the Italian peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had been raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial favour at his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaintances benevolently, and bade them express their wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,” they replied: “nothing more than a declaration from the Pontiff that their district should be henceforth distinguished by its having two harvests every year!” And the obliging “successor of the Fisherman” smiled, and not only granted their request, but promised more than he was petitioned for. “To do honour to my old friends,” said he, “not alone shall they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year in their district shall be twice as long as it is in any other!” And therewith the simple people departed joyously.
The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. Their language bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with symbols in connexion therewith, and their public treasury “pascua” showed, by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he who was rich in minted coin enjoyed the pecunia, or “money,” for which “flocks” (pecus) were bought and sold. The owner of an “estate” (locus) was locuples, a term for a man well endowed with worldly goods; and he was in possession of a “salary,” who had his salarium, his allowance of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he lived.
The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with wine. The labour was considerable; for, although the plough was light, it lacked the conveniencies of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled plough is the work of the inventive Gauls.
The French Republicans made a show of paying honour to agriculture by public demonstrations, the chief actors in which were the foremost men in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly enough, took their idea from the example presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pronounced execrable; and by one, too, who was the most despotic upon earth,—the Emperor of China.
And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more ostentation than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,” says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the plough; but, as he adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of European Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising no influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, “to find a more impressive ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting!—how stimulating!—how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their nation was, in reality, sovereign of the seas! But now it is little more than a ridiculous sport, and without any other effect than that of attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension.”
Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged in the cultivation of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the property of such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure; and it strikes us, that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption than that with which we endow roué Members of Parliament, who have no excuse for exceeding their income. They are free from arrest for six weeks from the prorogation of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is “further prorogued.” The Great Council would be all the better for the absence of men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty’s lieges by exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose mission it is to render it productive.