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Honesty Is the Best Policy. Second Prize Essay, Rural Economy March 1832 The American Farmer attracted a great many letters, reports, and notices. Few of its many contributors composed cogently argued essays about the art and theory of agriculture. In order to stimulate such writings, editor Gideon B. Smith instituted an essay contest that would be reinstated intermittently throughout the 1830s. Herbemont, having puzzled over the inability of his state’s politicians to engage seriously in the reform of the agricultural system, even when a political crisis threatened its destruction, came to a conclusion that the political economy of the South suffered from a kind of falsity, a bad faith, practiced by exploitive planters in pursuit of money rather than contentment. In this essay Herbemont articulated his philosophy of an agrarian “good life.” Its foundation lay in an ethical resolve to live and act honestly. Honesty came in Herbemont’s understanding to become a term of broad significance, naming a determination to act with understanding and good intention toward the place, the people, the creatures, and the land with which one lived. Published in American Farmer 41, no. 3 (March 30, 1832): 21–23. Happiness is the object of pursuit with all men, from the greatest potentate to the humblest shepherd; and indeed, I might say, with all animated creation. This being, then, the supreme object of all our endeavours, it becomes rational creatures to seek it by the surest and most direct road that can be found. This road has long been known to exist solely in honesty; hence my choice of the old apothegm selected as the epigraph to this piece. I apply it designedly, in addressing cultivators of the soil; not because they are more in need of the admonition it conveys; on the contrary, it is because they are less exposed to offend against it than most other classes of men, and that, if we expect to reap a rich harvest, we must sow the seed in a soil well prepared and suited to its growth. I understand the word honesty to include almost all the other virtues, such as truth, justice, prudence, industry, economy, love to our fellow men, and I think I may include a due regard for the brute creation, and even for the vegetable world. 269 Gratitude to the benevolent author of all,1 makes it a duty in us to hold in high estimation all his valuable gifts, which must necessarily prompt us to cultivate and improve them according to our utmost abilities and lights of reason, given to us for no other purpose than to serve as our guide in our search for happiness. Although this is addressed to the cultivators of the soil particularly, it is by no means intended to deprive any other class of mankind of the benefits which may, perchance, be derived from its attentive perusal. Would to God that all men, and most particularly politicians and statesmen, had this maxim always before their eyes, and as it were deeply engraved in the minds! What glory would accrue to any government, that of the United States for instance; what power would it not possess !2 How honored by all the world, if it were entirely and exclusively governed by the purest means of honesty and truth! How glorious it would be for any government to have absolutely discarded from their diplomacy and intercourse with the world, at home and abroad, stratagem, intrigue, falsehood, rapacity and injustice; and be solely guided by the strictest principles of probity, truth, plain dealing and common sense! But I am forgetting that this is intended as an essay on improvements in agriculture. It is conceived impracticable in a paper like this, to descend to particulars; for it would require many folio volumes to do justice to the subject. I shall attempt, then, nothing but general views, and throw out only hints on the various departments of agriculture. Every one can glean materials enough for his various operations, in books and other publications on rural concerns, and also from the dictates of plain reason, discarding, as much as possible, the prejudices of education, or rather of the want of it, and all practices founded on routine, inconsistent with plain sense. A man ought to be very cautious in the selection of a spot on which he contemplates carrying on his agricultural operations, and on which he intends fixing his permanent residence. No man in his senses will hesitate in giving the preference...

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