8 [Senate 



that ambition and rapine have forged, and even above all the embel- 

 lishments of social life, that arts merely ornamental have ever pro- 

 duced. Nor need we overvalue our agricultural inventions, or bestow 

 exaggerated praise upon their authors. Admitting the inferiority of 

 our schools to the Universities of Europe, and the deficiency of our 

 artisans in learning and experience, we may yet maintain that all sci- 

 entific acquirements here, and all inventions, pass immediately to the 

 general use, and contribute directly to the general w^elfare. Such are 

 now our means of diffusmg and preserving knowledge, that no real- 

 ly useful invention can either be lost or fail to be employed in every 

 region of our country. Let this festival, 



" Pastorally sweet 



And rurally magnificent," 



be preserved, and the increasing emulation of our yeomanry and me- 

 chanics maintained, and the effect will be seen, not only in the im- 

 provement of agriculture, but in the amelioration of the character of 

 the people. Thirty years before the revolutionary war, at a celebra- 

 tion in Massachusetts, the Matrons and Maidens of Boston appeared 

 on the Mall, each industriously plying the busy spinning wheel. 

 Need it then excite surprise that our sister State now excels with the 

 shuttle, and extorts wealth from the floods, the ice and the rocks! 

 The character of a people may be studied in their amusements. The 

 warlike Greeks fixed their epochs on the recurrence of the Olym- 

 pic games. The husbandmen of Switzerland at stated periods cele- 

 brate the introduction of the vine. Well may we then, continue ova- 

 tions in honor of agriculture, which, while they give expression to 

 national rejoicing, promote the welfare of our country, and the good 

 of mankind. 



Farmers of New-York — You do wisely in collecting from every 

 district and every region, the various species of plants, and adopting 

 such as find our soil and climate most congenial; in introducing new 

 branches of culture and mechanic industry; in choosing out of do- 

 mestic and foreign stock, the animals which propagate most rapidly, 

 with the least expense of subsistence, and yield the largest returns 

 for the husbandman's care; in stimulating invention to the discovery 

 of new principles of tillage, machines and implements, for increasing 

 the fertility of the soil and the productiveness of human labor. But 

 these efforts alone, well conceived and beneficial as they are, do not 

 fulfill the responsibilities of the American farmer. 



