No. 112.] 495 



form, under the auspices of the State, has been the theme of our 

 gubernatorial messages. Of the great men who have occupied 

 the Presidential chair, from the time of our beloved Washington, 

 we find message after message, replete on the subject. 



Washington and Jefferson, were active^Epractical and enterpris- 

 ing farmers, and the correspondence of both, particularly the for- 

 mer, is full of the importance of national action in regard to it. 



In writing to Sir John Sinclair, that eminent reformer in hus- 

 bandry, in Great Britain, in 1794, he says : " I know of no pur- 

 suit in w^hich more real and important services can be rendered to 

 any country, than by improving its agriculture, its breeds of use- 

 ful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares." 



And again to the same person he' writes : 



^'It will be some time, I fear, before an agricultural society with 

 Congressional aids, fwe were then,-you will bear in mind over 

 loaded by a national debt] will be established in this country; we 

 must w^alk, as others have done, before we can run. Small socie- 

 ties must prepare the way for greater, but with the light before us 

 I hope we shall not be so long in maturation as older nations 

 have been." 



While he kept the subject of encouraging agriculture promi- 

 nently before Congress, in all his annual messages, you will allow 

 me to quote from the last he ever made to that body : 



'^ It will not be doubted, witl; reference to either national or 

 individual welfare, agriculture is of primary importance. In 

 proportion as nations advance in population, and other circum- 

 stances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent, and 

 renders the cultivation of the soil more and more an object of 

 public patronage. Institutions for promoting it, grow up, support- 

 ed by the public purse; and to what object can it be dedicated with 

 greater propriety ?" 



Now who ever thought (»f charging the writer of these senti- 

 ments, with impractical or chimerical views on any subject, and I 

 hesitate not to say, that the diffusion of knowledge in regard to 



