192 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



OPENING ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY AT SACRA- 

 MENTO, CALIFORNIA, ON THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1887. 



By Hon. J. G. Swinkeeton, of Stockton. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am afraid that the intro- 

 duction of your President has^ been somewhat pretentious. I am very 

 much afraid that if I were to attempt to deliver an address on agriculture 

 that I should come out as an agricultural Governor of Indiana once did, 

 who had been elected to the chair of State chiefly through the influence of 

 the farmers, and he considered it his duty under the circumstances to 

 make himself entirely solid with the agricultural interests. He had not 

 been very long in the chair of State before one of his constituents wrote to 

 him to know of his opinion on hydraulic rams, and he wrote back to him 

 thus: "Your letter respecting hydraulic rams has been received and con- 

 tents noted. In reply I wish to state that this is an animal upon which I 

 have devoted a great deal of cultivation. I consider it the best in the 

 world. It is better than the southdown for mutton and better than merino 

 for wool." [Laughter.] I have no desire, I have no time, I have no 

 opportunity, I have no ability to enter upon a discussion of the course of 

 the developments of the agricultural interests of the State of California; 

 but if I had such time, if I had such opportunity, if I had such ability, I 

 am afraid that I would not do it. I have sat for one hour in this part of 

 the building, and I have been permitted to observe the wonderful exhibits 

 that are spread out here before me, and if I had any speech to make at all, 

 if I had any inspiration at all, if I had any language at all, if I had any 

 thought at all, they would necessarily, by virtue of my surroundings, center 

 upon the topic of the sovereignty of man. In spite of all that has been 

 said to the contrary, in spite of all that has been written, in spite of all 

 that has been sung, we must believe that there existed some time in re- 

 mote antiquity a primitive man. One of our greatest American poets has 

 depicted an old man at the close of a career of study and labor, who had 

 devoted all his life to the science of alchemy, who had endeavored to find 

 a universal solvent. He had spent days, weeks, months, and years, in the 

 hope that he might be able to read the stars and forecast events in human 

 life. He had spent his whole lifelong in endeavoring to discover a secret 

 by which he might transmute base metals into gold; and when all had 

 been done, and he lay upon his death bed, he attempted to keep the flick- 

 ering lamp of life burning by stimulants which he had discovered, to no 

 avail. He complained against the Almighty, because He had set a 

 boundary and a limit to human effort by means of death. And the poet 

 makes him say: 



Aye, were not man to die, but were to occupy half this narrow sphere; 

 Could he but live and brood the knowledge here ; 

 Could he but watch the mystic word and hour, 

 Only his Maker could transcend his power. 



