8EVENTEENTB DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 695 



adjusted tor t he benefit of manufacturers. Treaties in behalf of commerce 

 are entered into with foreign nations. Bu1 there is no legislation for the 

 farmer. He is the producer and taxpayer and the burden-carrier of the 

 country, and the profits of Ins labor are fixed by railroads, merchants, and 



foreign markets. He is left alone to work out his own salvation. You 

 need agriculture in order that you may raise men. The grandest crop of 

 a nation is man. Wealth and art and culture and mines and ships are 

 nothing unless the state raises men. And men are nothing unless they are 

 loyal, and how can they be loyal if there be no homes, and if there be no 

 homes how can there be love of country. To the mother and to the priest 

 we leave the subject of religion, but the statesman concerns himself with 

 whatever will foster patriotism and love of country, which, next to the 

 love of God and wife and child, is the noblest passion that ever animated 

 the human heart. Agriculture creates homes and fixes them immutable 

 with the soil. One learns to love his country from the associations of his 

 boyhood. Wherever he wanders the man looks fondly back to the scenes 

 of his boyhood. The stream in which he swam, the forests and glades 

 and dell and swards his youthful footsteps trod, are ever present to his 

 mind. Read English poetry ami you will find it abounds with descrip- 

 tions of the homes and natural scenery of Britain. These themes have 

 inspired the poet's pen since England first begun, and meet response from 

 the heart of every peasant and lord in every clime "the sun's bright circle 

 warms." The miner performs the Ca'sarian operation upon the body of 

 the earth whenever he seeks for gold. He scars the fair face of Nature 

 and mars the beauty of the earth. Who could write a poem to a pile of 

 rocks, or indite a sonnet to a muddy stream? How can you expect your 

 boy "when wandering on a foreign strand," homeward his footsteps turn 

 to a land seared and scarred and riven and forest-denuded, and cry exult- 

 ant. "This is my home, my native land ' " I beseech you, then, to plant 

 these hills with vines and trees. Build up the temples of home on every 

 slope of these grand mountains. Cover the scars your own hands have 

 made upon the face of your mother earth with roses and vines whose morn- 

 ing and evening exhalations shall be the grateful incense to Him who made 

 this world of beauty and gave you for an heritage this land of plenty. 

 You owe it to your children, you owe it as patriots as well as parents, to 

 leave this country better than you found it. What father does not dream 

 that life's gentle close shall find him surrounded by his children, well con- 

 ditioned in life ? What pursuit than agriculture offers more security that 

 family ties will not be sundered, that the family name will be honored for 

 generations? If you would have men to rule this land, after you shall 

 have gone, who Avill transmit to their posterity the blessings of constitu- 

 tional and religious liberty possessed by you, who shall resist sedition, 

 anarchy, socialism, nihilism, and the thousand devilish foreign-born 

 schemes of idle, vicious scum, consecrate this land to agriculture. Every 

 tree, every vine is a teacher of the love of the beautiful and of order. Every 

 cottage is a hostage against misrule. Daniel Webster, with profound wis- 

 dom, said that each recurring Summer he took his children to the home 

 of his father in the hills of New Hampshire, and recounted to them the 

 story of the colonists, of the perils encountered, of sufferings endured, of 

 heroic sacrifices offered for the sake of the civil and religious liberties his 

 children enjoyed, and admonished them yearly to visit the spot and renew 

 and keep alive the love of country he instilled in their hearts. I am deeply 

 interested in the generation that is to follow us, in the native sons and 

 daughters of Nevada and Placer Counties. I want the love of their coun- 

 try to burn in their hearts with unquenchable flame. Mr. Webster knew 



