428 [Assembly 



Pennsjivania has one private institution recently established at 

 Germantown, some seven miles from the city of Philadelphia. 

 This institution is said to be in a flourishing condition, but receiv- 

 ing no legislative aid, the tuition comes too high to be of general use 

 to those of limited means. Ohio has also raised a large subscrip- 

 tion to establish an agricultural college. But, gentlemen, the 

 proud State of N"ew-York, the Empire Slate with Excelsi:r for her 

 motto, has not evm one! With her rich and flourishing State So- 

 ciety, and her numerous county and town auxiliaries, she has not 

 a single school to teach her sons the first principles of its science, 

 or the nature of her soils, and a proposition to establish an insti- 

 tution of this kind, or a department connected with other public 

 institutions of learning, has been voted down again and again by her 

 very wise legislators. Now, gentlemen, why is this great apathy in 

 a matter of so much interest and of such vital importance to the 

 whole country ? It is no new scheme or untried experiment, for 

 as I have before shown, these schools have been established and 

 continued with great utility and success through most parts of 

 the Old World. Although we feel that we have a government 

 far superior to them, yet we have much to learn from her experi- 

 ence in agriculture and the arts. Prof Johnston, of England, in 

 Ms address delivered before the State Agricultural Society at Sy- 

 jracuse, in 1849, says that " two nations of the same blood, placed 

 ^otherwise in the same condition, the one which teaches the prin- 

 ciples of agriculture in her schools will reap the most productive 

 "harvests in her fields, and that as in England and Scotland, a time 

 will come in the agricultural history of every country, when old 

 means will fail to maintain its community in a prosperous and 

 happy condition, and when every new means of fertility which 

 advancing knowk due ciin supply, must be made generally known 

 and become generally employ ed."^' Nationally, this subject has re- 

 ceived the approbation of all the Presidents of this great Repub- 

 lic, from the first to the one who now so honorably fills, that most 

 important station. Geo. Washington, the farmer -ol Mount Ver- 

 non, who has received the horn; ge of a world ; lie who every 

 American citizen has been proud to call the " father of his coun- 

 try ;'' he who after rece' vlng all the glory and fame of a successful 

 revolutionj chose the i,Io\.d rather than the scepter ; in his last 



