ANNUAL ADDEESS. 885 



and if yoa would work well, you must do tlie work of fathers 

 and sovereigns. As farmers and mechanics you owe it to your- 

 selves — to the noble professions you uphold and adorn, to make 

 youi'selves skillful masters and proficients in all the duties of 

 your arts ; to sustain and patronize its established institutes, pa- 

 pers, periodicals, gatherings, and fairs, which shed the light of 

 intelligence and the genial glow of rivalry, over your pursuits. 

 You need a fire-side literature of your own ; adapted to your own 

 tastes, your wants, your interests, and your pursuits. Your first 

 duties to your successors is to create it, as no profession or art 

 that has not a peculiar and distinctive literature of its own, can 

 lay claim to its due share of regard among mankind, or secure to 

 its members that high intellectual and moral culture and disci- 

 pline it is designed and adapted in its own nature to produce. 

 Foster then, by all the means in your power, the agricultural 

 and mechanical literature of the age in which you live. 



As FATHERS, you owe a similar and still higher duty to your 

 sons. The benefits of free access to such a literature are of incal- 

 culable moment to them. But such a literature can be perfected 

 in your profession only by the same means by which it has been 

 secured to others. Peculiar periodicals, professorships, endow- 

 ments, and universities, are as essential to its existence in your 

 professions, as in the professions of war, law, medicine and di- 

 vinity ; and yet .until within a few years, agriculture, the most 

 elevating science and the most noble study, as well as the most 

 healthful and genial art that Grod has ever given to man, could 

 not claim for itself a single professorship, or high school, on the 

 face of the earth ; whilst the varied institutes of war, law, medi- 

 cine and divinity existed in every State and almost in every 

 village ; still the proportion of people engaged in agriculture and 

 the mechanic arts was as one hundred to one. So has it ever 

 been under the reign of war and of words. But we are now 

 standing on the threshold of a new era — the reign of works. See 

 to it then that appropriate institutions are endowed to give to 

 your sons as thorough an education for the shop and the farm as 

 you are wont to give those destined for the camp, the court, the 

 the pulpit, or the press. 

 2u 



