Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 8).djvu/139

 the productive power of labour. Agriculture and domestic manufactures will render a people perfectly independent. Money is of no real consequence excepting when employed as a circulating medium; fancy however has cherished for it an irrational partiality. Thank Heaven! we have no considerable mines of silver and gold to corrupt our country; but plenty of iron to plough her fields and to defend her liberties.

Agriculture is the most natural, necessary, and honourable employment of man. Ignorant pride and vain folly may represent it as derogatory; but in so doing they show how very far they are from true greatness. Agriculture furnishes for vigorous constitutions the most salutary exercise; and here the brightest geniuses may find ample employment.—An unlimited field for experiment in many branches of natural philosophy is here presented, and there is no sphere in life so well calculated as this to promote individual virtue and public advantage.

Here man is engaged in the peculiar work assigned him by his Creator, and many interesting reflections naturally result from it. The field which he cultivates is his parent earth. According to the righteous appointment of Heaven, he must here obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow, until he returns to the dust. The employment naturally directs his thoughts to his origin and destinies; and impresses his mind with a sense of his mortality, dependence, and accountability to God. Here too he reflects, with peculiar advantage, upon the gracious plan of Redemption. The return of spring joyfully reminds him of the Resurrection; and in the perishing grain which he has sown, he recognizes St. Paul's similitude of this great event.

{37} The further a man's employment is from rural scenes and avocations, the further he is from the original dignity and simplicity of his nature. Here may be acquired the