104, BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



To do SO would be to consider questions involving principles 

 of public policy about which men have different opinions, and 

 whose discussion might carry us away from the truth rather 

 than bring us towards it. But I think most will agree that 

 a currency representing a fictitious worth, which had the 

 tendency to stimulate reckless expenditure and extravagant 

 modes of living, together with the reduction of the amount 

 of business done in most branches of trade by the recent 

 decline in values and the reduction of manufactured goods — 

 have been among the most prominent of these causes. To 

 speak of these would be to weary you with an almost inter- 

 minable discussion, and so I pass to another matter, leaving 

 each to think out the bearings of these features for himself 

 on his own line. And yet a single word just here. It is 

 indeed encouraging that recent statistics concerning the great 

 industries, give indications of a revival of prosperity. In 

 lumber, in iron, in the textile industries, there are evidences 

 of a decided improvement. The export trade of Boston and 

 New York has opened better during the present year, than 

 in any corresponding year during the past four years. Dur- 

 ing a single week in January, six large steamers left Boston 

 for England, the total value of whose shipments were nearly 

 $1,500,000 — being chiefly breadstuifs and provisions — while 

 in a single day, during the same month, as many steamers 

 left New York for the same destination, with cargoes of 

 equal value; while in our own city of Portland, six vessels 

 were, a week or two since, loading, at the same time, with 

 breadstufls for the Old World : — breadstuffs, brought, it is 

 true, from the Great West by means of the Grand Trunk, 

 but breadstufls a part of which our own farmers could grow 

 just as well as Western farmers, if they would but put energy, 

 and manure, and elbow grease into their farming operations. 

 We might, at least, through these agencies, produce enough 

 for our own consumption, if we would. 



And now consider with me in a very brief way, a remedy 

 for all this unsettled and unsatisfactory condition of the 

 times — a plan not original with myself, for it has received 



