University of Virginia Library

2892. FARMERS, Virtues of.—

Those
who labor in the earth are the chosen people
of God, if He ever had a chosen people,
whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit
for substantial and genuine virtue. It
is the focus in which he keeps alive that sa
cred fire, which otherwise might escape from
the face of the earth.—
Notes on Virginia. Washington ed. viii, 405. Ford ed., iii, 268.
(1782)