STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. IS,". 



the Spartan loved is honored. Wo have it among us now — that independ- 

 ence which tlif Scottish chief felt when his toot was on Ids native heath. 



Let me give you one more ((notation from the distinguished men of the 

 past — one from good old Franklin, who tamed the lightning. He says: 

 ■• There seems to be hut three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The 

 first is by war, as the Romans did it. by plundering their conquered neigh- 

 bors. This is robbery. The second is by commerce, which is generally 

 cheating. The third is by agriculture, the only honest way wherein a 

 man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground — a kind of 

 continued miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward 

 for his innocent life and his virtuous industry." Well may you gentlemen 

 here assembled be proud of a thing thus spoken of by men of such distin- 

 guished worth and far-reaching intelligence. 



But these fine things, my friends, were said of agriculture ere she had 

 attained her present importance. They were said of her when she pre- 

 sented herself under skies less bright than yours, and less favored climes 

 than ours; when her Learning and her development were in their infancy. 

 Ere yet you had the deepest learning of man applied to this science, or 

 had gathered so great a knowledge of the earth's productions, and the 

 improvement of everything that grew out upon the earth, whether it be the 

 plants or the living tissue, whether it be the horse or ox, or that more ele- 

 vated animal, man himself, because agriculture does not stop with the ox, 

 or the goat and the sheep, or the wheat, but it reaches even to man himself. 

 And here to-night you will find assembled in this hall what one hundred 

 years ago you could not have assembled in the mightiest empires of this 

 world. Two hundred years ago you could not have produced an assem- 

 blage of men and women like this in any capital in Europe or anywhere 

 else. No. Agriculture has ennobled men, and women too. It has shel- 

 tered, refined, and improved the stock as much as you have improved the 

 racehorse. So that we may still be proud of Agriculture, and we may 

 justly say things of her more beautiful than was said of her before. Then 

 this land of ours! Ah, it is, of all the lands, the most beautiful; yes, in 

 every way that you can apply the word beauty. Well may we apply to 

 her what was applied by Byron to another land: 



It is a goodly sight to see 



What heaven has done for this delicious land; 

 What f ruits of fragrance blush on every tree, 



What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand. 



We are indeed a favored people. This land of ours is a new land of 

 promise, and in order that I may illustrate this idea, I propose to con- 

 trast for a few moments this land and the old land of promise. Going 

 back to the early records of that venerable book that is dear to us all, we 

 find that the Almighty had promised to a single family a land. Of all the 

 lands, we would suppose that it was the most beautiful and blessed. And 

 for years and years he trained that family ere they were allowed to enjoy 

 the land of promise. They passed from the east to the west; from the 

 Asiatic country, the cradle of the human race, into Egypt, whose learning 

 in the arts and agriculture was the proudest and grandest then upon the 

 earth. It is said of Moses himself, by way of praise, that he was skilled in 

 all the learning of the ancient Egyptians. And by and by, after years of 

 bondage and training, that strange people were allowed to pass out of that 

 land; they wandered forty years in the wilderness, received, amid the 

 thundering and lightning of Sinai, the laws of Almighty God — that law 

 which is the foundation of the code of every civilized nation, and every sys- 



