Of comforting thy limbs in warmth, though thou kindle not a spark.
Fear not, son of man, for thyself, nor thy seed--with a multitude is plenty:
God's blessing giveth increase, and with it larger than enough."
Surely it is folly for any one to despair of the future, while the providence of God superintends the affairs of the universe. Is it not sinful to doubt the power of that Being, who fed a vast multitude from a few loaves and small fishes? Is His arm shortened, that he can no longer produce those articles that are indispensable and necessary for the health and comfort of the creatures dependent upon his bounty? What millions have been fed by the introduction of the potato plant--that wild, half-poisonous native of the Chilian mountains! When first exhibited as a curiousity by Sir Walter Raleigh, who could have imagined the astonishing results,--not only in feeding the multitudes that for several ages in Ireland it has fed, but that the very blight upon it, by stopping an easy mode of obtaining food, should be the instrument in the hands of the great Father to induce these impoverished, starving children of an unhappy country, to remove to lands where honest toil would be amply remunerated, and produce greater blessings for them than the precarious support afforded by an esculent root? We have faith, unbounded faith, in the benevolent care of the Universal Father,--faith in the fertility of the earth, and her capabilities of supporting to the end of time her numerous offspring.
The over-population of old settled countries may appear to a casual thinker a dreadful calamity; and yet it is but the natural means employed by Providence to force the poorer classes, by the strong law of necessity, to emigrate and spread themselves over the earth, in order to bring into cultivation and usefulness its waste places. When the world can no longer maintain its inhabitants, it will be struck out of being by the fiat of Him who called it into existence.
Nothing has contributed more to the rapid advance of the province than the institution of the Agricultural Society, and from it we are already reaping the most beneficial results. It has stirred up a spirit of emulation in a large class of people, who were very supine in their method of cultivating their lands; who, instead of improving them, and making them produce not only the largest quantity of grain, but that of the best quality, were quite contented if they reaped enough from their slovenly farming to supply the wants of their family, of a very inferior sort.
Now, we behold a laudable struggle among the tillers of the soil, as to which shall send the best specimens of good husbandry to contend for the prizes at the provincial shows, where very large sums of money are expended in providing handsome premiums for the victors. All the leading men in the province are members of this truly honourable institution; and many of them send horses, and the growth of their gardens, to add to the general bustle and excitement of the scene. The summer before last, my husband took the second prize for wheat at the provincial show, and I must frankly own that I felt as proud of it as if it had been the same sum bestowed upon a prize poem.
There was an immense display of farm produce on the present occasion at Toronto, all excellent in their kind. The Agricultural Hall, a large, temporary building of boards, was completely filled with the fruits of the earth and the products of the dairy--
"A glorious sight, if glory dwells below,
Where heaven's munificence makes all the show."