A more estimable class of men than the farmers and planters of the United States is not to be found in the world. From the landing of the Pilgrims to the present day they have exerted an effective and salutary influence, not only upon the condition of the country, in respect to its material improvement, but upon the character and strength of our political institutions. It was to their sagacity and firmness that the colonies were chiefly indebted for their success in turning away and defeating the fury of the savages, and in baffling the persevering efforts of the mother country to enslave the provinces. For the most part the descendants of ancestors who had been, to an almost unprecedented extent, exposed to the faithlessness and persecutions of power, they seldom failed to be on their guard against its approaches, however artfully disguised. Every attempt to purchase their acquiescence in measures that they regarded as encroachments upon their liberties or subversive of their rights, through governmental favors, proved abortive. Grenville, when pressed, as prime minister, by the London merchants with the dangers that threatened the collection of their American debts from the effects of the stamp-tax, was prodigal in his offers of governmental favors to secure the submission of the colonists to the odious measure. "If one bounty," said he, "will not do, I will add two; if two will not do, I will add three." But these offers, as well as all the efforts which had been and were subsequently made by the Crown to quiet the Colonies through bounties and commercial privileges, were unavailing. The "landed interest," constituting a great majority of the colonists, was too wise to be duped, and too honest to be corrupted, by special favors of any description. Placed by the nature of their pursuits, in a great measure, beyond the reach of court and official blandishments, and less dependent on the special privileges of the Crown than those who looked to them for their support, they uniformly regarded these offers with distrust rather than desire. They had, from these and other considerations, been led to embrace the principles upon which the Revolution was founded with more earnestness, and to cherish them with a more uncalculating devotion, than many of their Revolutionary associates. The circumstance that a larger share of the defense of those principles had devolved upon them, by reason of the excess of their numbers, naturally commended more warmly to their hearts doctrines for the establishment of which they had suffered so much inquietude and encountered so many perils.