14 [Senate 



selves, were undertaken when farmers held power. Call to mind the 

 immense structures which make this State the astonishment of the 

 world; its channels for inward communication carried upwards to the 

 waters of the St. Lawrence, stepping aside to the Ontario, and uni- 

 ting at the northwest with the illimitable wildernesses of our inland 

 seas; and then join me in paying tribute to those who were the ser- 

 vants of the public mind in commencing this gigantic system. To 

 De Witt Clinton, whose capacious mind grasped in advance the sum 

 of its infinite benefits — whose energetic, vehement and commanding 

 will was to the enterprise like a powerful mill-stream, as it dashes on 

 an overshot wheel of vast dimensions. To Van Buren, who, when the 

 bill for the construction of the canal had almost been abandoned by 

 its earliest friends, put forth those noble-spirited, well-remembered 

 exertions, which resuscitated it when all seemed lost, and restored it 

 to to the approbation of your Legislature. Well might those chiefs 

 in the world of opinion embrace each other in the hour of their suc- 

 cess. If in action they were often divided, in this great service they 

 share a common glory. 



But the farmers of New-York are not content with improvements 

 in the material world alone. From their generous impulses springs 

 your system of free schools. They have proved themselves the libe- 

 ral benefactors of academies and colleges. They, too, have been 

 careful for the means of their own special culture, and have founded 

 and nurtured societies for promoting agriculture. For an example 

 of the virtues of private life, I name to you the farmer of Westches- 

 ter county, the pure and spotless Jay, who assisted to frame our first 

 treaty of peace, which added Ohio and the lovely west to our agri- 

 culture. Side by side with him, I name the friend of his youth, Ro- 

 bert R. Livingston, the younger, the enlightened statesman of our 

 revolution, whose expansive mind succeeded in negociating for our 

 country a world beyond the Mississippi, and gained access for our 

 flag to the Gulf of Mexico. Here, on the Hudson, he is celebrated 

 as it were by every steamboat, and remembered on your farms through 

 his experimental zeal. On this day be remembered the virtues of 

 Stephen Van Rensselaer, who was among the first to bring Durham 

 cattle into this State, and who liberally diffused the breed. 



Join with me also in a tribute to Mitchell, the faithful advocate, 

 and perhaps institutor, of one of the earliest agricultural societies ; 

 to Jesse Buclj who connected science with fact, taught how the most 



