Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. [Query XIX, “Manufactures”]

Your position that a small farm, well worked and well manned, will produce more than a larger one ill-tended, is undoubtedly true in a certain degree. there are extremes in this as in all other cases. the true medium may really be considered and stated as a Mathematical problem. ‘Given the...

but I think I have observed that your countrymen who have been obliged to work out their own fortunes here, have succeeded best with a small farm. labour indeed is dear here, but rents are low, and on the whole a reasonable profit & comfortable subsistance results. it is at the same time the...

I have always believed it better to be settled on a small farm, just sufficient to furnish the table, and to leave one’s principal plantations free to pursue the single object of cropping without interruption.

we could, in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe: not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good. yet I have ever observed to my countrymen who think it’s introduction important, that a labourer cultivating wheat, rice, tobacco or cotton here, will be...

I remember you seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet height in a pot the fragrance of which (from it’s gummy bud if I recollect rightly) was remarkable peculiarly agreeable to me, and you were so kind as to remark that it required only a green house, and that you would furnish me...

I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.

Dined at the President’s ... There was as usual a dissertation upon Wines; not very edifying ... Mr Jefferson said that he had always been extremely fond of Agriculture, and knew nothing about it; but the person who united with other Science the greatest agricultural knowledge of any man he knew...

I have to acknolege the reciept of your favor of Dec. 20. and am much pleased to find our progress in manufactures to be so great. that of cotton is peculiarly interesting, because we raise the raw material in such abundance, and because it may to a great degree supply our deficiencies both in...

the class principally defective is that of agriculture. it is the first in utility, & ought to be the first in respect. the same artificial means which have been used to produce a competition to learning, may be equally successful in restoring agriculture to it’s primary dignity in the eyes...