20 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



The Society was called to order at Three o'Clock, P. M., of the second day of 

 the Fair, under the spacious Tent of the Society, by Erastus W. Drury, Esq. 

 Pi-esident ; and after the peifonnance of an appropriate piece of Music, by the 

 Bands in attendance, the President, in a few appropriate remarks, introduced the 

 Hon. John H. Lathrop to the audience. 



ADDRESS BY JOHN H. LATHROP, LL.D. 



CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the State Agricultural Society : 



The extreme division of labor and of employments, concerned in 

 the production of material wealth, by I'eason of which a greatly multiplied popu- 

 lation is sustained at a far more elevated standard of enjoyment and of cultm-e,. 

 both of body and of mind, is the distinction of modern civilization. 



Indeed, all civilization implies a departure from the personal isolation and 

 independence of the purely savage state — it imphes social arrangement and clas- 

 sification, fitted more or less discreetly to the production of proposed social 

 ends ; be those ends political or economical — and the character as well as the 

 permanence of the system, depends, ultimately and properly, on the adaptation 

 of its arrangements to the real and permanent wants of men — on the wisdom 

 of its means, and the benevolence of its ends. 



In most of the ancient forms of ci\-ilization, the artificial aiTangements of 

 society were for the benefit of a governing body, who wielded the civil powei- 

 and directed the military arm of the state ; while the labor which sustained the 

 whole, was fixed in its position at the base of the social pyramid, by the heredi- 

 tary disabilities of caste ; or under the more crushing weight of territorial serfdom, 

 or of domestic servitude. 



Under social conditions like these, w^liich divorced the intellect of the State 

 from its productive arm, there is no ground for surj^rise at the brilliant results 

 wrought out by the governing mind, in an Egyptian, a Greek, or a Roman 

 civilization. 



We might expect to see, as we do see, the fine arts approximating towards 

 the ]ierfect ideal of the beautiful and the gi-and — the breathing marble, the 

 rnlumn with its lofty capital, surmounted by the dome and the arch. 



