every impulse, device, and action.  Honesty is sometimes spoken of as a vulgar virtue; and perhaps, that honesty which barely refrains from outraging the positive rules ordained by society for the protection of property, and which ordinarily pays its debts and performs its engagements, however useful and commendable a quality, is not to be numbered among the highest efforts of human virtue.  But that integrity which, however tempting the opportunity, or however secure against detection, no selfishness nor resentment, no lust of power, place, favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of right, is the perfection of man’s moral nature.  In this sense, the poet was right when he pronounced “an honest man’s the noblest work of God.”  It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral intrepidity and vivifying energy it imparts to his character....  Erected on such a basis, and built up of such materials, fame is enduring.  Such is the fame of our Washington—­of the man “inflexible to ill, and obstinately just.”  While, therefore, other monuments, intended to perpetuate human greatness, are daily mouldering into dust, and belie the proud inscriptions which they bear, the solid, granite pyramid of his glory lasts from age to age, imperishable, seen afar off, looming high over the vast desert, a mark, a sign, and a wonder, for the wayfarers though this pilgrimage of life.

[Footnote 46:  A prominent lawyer and statesman of North Carolina.]

* * * * *

=_Jesse Buel, 1778-1839._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From “The Farmer’s Instructor.”

=_152._= EXTENT AND DEFECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.

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.