f  - '

402    general    summary    of the state.

State. Around these villages are fine farms and thrifty farmers,
who always find a ready market for all their surplus productions,
at advanced rates. Their sons and daughters, who do not prefer
agriculture, can find other employments near their own homes,    a*,

either in teaching, mercantile or mechanical work of every variety
to suit the diverse genius of all classes. It is a noted fact that the
more diversified is any country with mountains, hills, valleys,
plains, lakes and rivers, the more diversified are the people who
live there in their occupations of life. Nature never designed that
the gifts or ingenuity of all men should be alike, any more than it
designed that they should look alike, and if they are placed in a
position where there is no chance to receive the rudiments to de-
velop their natural genius, it must always remain latent, and they
or the world will never receive any benefit from the gifts which na-
ture has bestowed upon them. The employments jf the people of
New-Hampshire are as varied as the surface of the country in
which they live. While New-Hampshire manufactures 148 differ-
ent kinds of goods, Georgia, with three times the population, pro-
duces only 65; Illinois, with eight times the number of inhabi-    if

tants, produces 210, and Massachusetts 325. If a person’s genius
is not adapted to the profession which he pursues through life, one
half of his time is thrown away. Two men are brought up on farms
in Illinois—one is a natural farmer, while the other is a natural
machinist, but he dees not know it, and in those broad prairies
there is no chance to find it out, so he leads an indolent life all his
days, and is called lazy by his neighbors, while the other man is
prosperous and happy. If this natural machinist had lived in
New England, he would have found out his calling and followed
it. The greater the variety of labor in any country, the more rapid
the accumulation of wealth and the more general the diffusion of it
among the people. If Illinois, in proportion to its population,
had as many men and women employed as New-Hampshire, it
would set 26,360 males and 76,690 females at work who are now
lying idle, and are consumers instead of producers, and if paid    ^

the same wages as others receive who work in that State, they
would earn enough in five years to build and equip all the rail-
roads now running through Illinois. This is enough to show that
hills and mountains in any country are no curse to the inhabitants,
but rather a blessing and far preferable to continuous broad plains,
if they are fertile and productive.

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