546 [Assembly 



the mo(?es of giving increased fertility to the soil, all the concom- 

 itants of good farming at the present time more intelligently 

 adopted than in the county of Richmond ; and to few places are 

 they better adapted. ' Forming, as this island does, one of the 

 out-posts of the great city of ihe new world, and at all times in 

 free and cheap communication with it, feeling instantly, and ready 

 to take advantage of the slightest favorable symptom in its great 

 moneyed pulse ; here, if anywhere on this continent, are we pre- 

 pared to test each new experiment, and practically to illustrate 

 each deduction of science, which points the way to cheapen cul-' 

 tivation or increase the product of the land. 



* 



The richi'y endowed European seats of learning may more ad- 

 vatageously labor in the field of theory, and the hardy sons of 

 New-England may bear away the palm of invention ; yet how 

 meager their r ward, hut for that intelligence which appreciates, 

 and liberality which adopts the result of their labor, both \\hich 

 form so prominent traits in the character of the Staten Island 

 farmer. 



With you, then, gentlemen, I leave these things, their history 

 and their practical appliances, while I ask your attention to the 

 social truths which machinery is aiding to develop. For none 

 may deny, that while labor-saving invention and scientific results, 

 tending to increased wealth, benefit the outer man, another and 

 loftier system of WcXiXs is, by the same means, induced. With 

 wealth comes the desire to use it. As man triumphs over the 

 barriers of nature, comes a prouder sense of his position and stand- 

 ing in the scale of created beings, a more refined taste, a desire 

 for intellectual cultivation, an enlarged philanthropy, a wider 

 charity ; the world becomes his neighbor, and the wants of man, 

 other than physical, claim and receive his sympathy and his aid. 

 It is this idea which should lend the charm which instinctively 

 attracts our attention, and commands our interest, in every com- 

 bination of wood and iron which performs the work of bone and 

 ginew. It is for this we should hail with equal pleasure the Eu- 

 reka of the student, as he announces to the world a new birth of 

 his brain. In this onward march, of which these practical results 



