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compete for premiums on improved modes of tillage or the production of any 

 wop or other article, shall be required, before such premium is adjudged, to 

 deliver to the awarding committee a full and correct statement of the process 

 of such mode of tillage, or production, and the expense and value of the 

 same, with a view of showing accurately the profits derived, or expected to 

 be derived therefrom." 



To carry the object here aimed at into effect, the duty devolves on the di- 

 rectors of the society, of appointing awarding committees for judging the 

 different classes of articles offered in competition, and awarding premiums for 

 the same. 



But we must not conclude, gentlemen, that our duties all terminate with 

 the mere external organization of our society. It must have life, energy, souL 

 It must be animated and moved by that internal vital principle, without 

 which all the mere dead forms we may weave upon it, will only amount to so 

 many inert incumbrances, which in the end will but accelerate its dissolution. 

 To this end we must bring to our aid intelligence — science, whose light having 

 now penetrated almost every department of nature, and opened the store- 

 houses of her hidden treasures, has filled the civilized world with all the 

 brilliant discoveries and improvements which have in a very few centuries 

 past so astonishingly changed its condition. Agriculture has felt its energi- 

 sing power. The same amount of labor once required to support a single 

 family from the soil, will now support a whole community. And in the same 

 ratio that improvements have been and are made, in the same ratio they may 

 still and ever progress, indefinitely. 



We shall hence learn to give more heed to the cause of education generally, 

 than we have done. We must educate our sons and daughters with a view 

 to this great end — the development of the means of true progress in all 

 things involving our interests, and this great interest more than all. All 

 other interests will necessarily follow in their order. 



I hope it will not be deemed out of place, if I here press this subject — the 

 cause of education — upon your special attention. How strangely, in relation 

 to it, have the ends and aims of the civilized world been perverted. If we 

 educate a son, it is with a view to establishing him in some profession; if we 

 educate a daughter it is to the end that she may be a lady — or in other words, 

 that both may learn to shun, if not despise, the arts and habits of industry. 

 We shall never come right on this subject till we set out under the full con- 

 rictipn that every farmer and mechanic should be thoroughly educated. Then 

 we may safely leave the professions to take care of themselves, and my word 

 for it, there will then be less drones and vagabonds to infest society. A 

 good education is not all that is necessary to enable a man or a woman to fill 

 their appropriate sphere in society — that is, what is commonly called a good 

 education. But this should be added : a good education, with a knowledge 

 of the arts, and habits of industry. 



Our children, then, if their genius and circumstances naturally prompt 

 them to it, can much more readily acquire the several professions, if needs 

 be, after they have learned how to work, than they can learn how to work, if 



