It is a saying of Antiquity, often quoted: “Oh, too fortunate husbandmen, if they only knew their blessings!”[135] Nowhere are these words more applicable than to this neighborhood, where Nature has done so much, and where all that Nature has done is enhanced by an intelligent and liberal spirit. An eminent French writer, one of the greatest of his country, who wrote in the middle of the last century, when France was a despotism, Montesquieu, has remarked in his “Spirit of Laws,” that “countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but in proportion to their liberty.”[136] A beautiful truth. But here in this valley are both. Where is there greater fertility? where is there truer liberty? If the farmers of our country needed anything to stimulate pride in their vocation, it would be found in the statistics furnished by the national census. That of 1860 is not yet prepared, and I go back to that of 1850. Here it appears, that, out of the whole employed population of the United States over fifteen years of age, two millions four hundred thousand, or forty-four per cent, were engaged in agricultural pursuits, while the total number engaged in commerce, trade, manufactures, mechanic arts, and mining was only one million six hundred thousand, or about thirty per cent. These figures show an immense predominance of the agricultural interest in the whole country. Of course in Massachusetts the commercial and manufacturing interests are relatively larger than in other parts of the country. But our farmers are numerous. This same census shows, that, in 1850, the four largest staples of our country, ranking them according to their nominal value, were: Indian corn, two hundred and ninety-six million dollars; wheat, one hundred million dollars; cotton, ninety-eight million dollars; hay, ninety-six million dollars. These figures, of course, are familiar, but they are so instructive that they will bear repetition. Besides illustrating the magnitude of our agricultural interests, they shed new light on the lofty pretensions that have been made for King Cotton. There is no crown for hay, or wheat, or Indian corn, and yet two of these stand above cotton. But the whole table testifies to the power of the farmer. From another quarter are statistics showing how agricultural pursuits favor longevity. Out of seventeen hundred persons, the average life of farmers was forty-five years; of merchants, thirty-three years; of mechanics, twenty-nine years; and of laborers, twenty-seven years. Thus length of days seems to be an agricultural product.