STATE AGKICULTURAL SOCIETY. 21 



will the influences which tend to degrade labor attempt to pass 

 these boundaries. 



' This " Cordon Sanitaire " can not be passed by any feeling, 

 which, degrading labor, necessarily degrades man. I have con- 

 fined this view of the subject to farm labor, but it is not necessa- 

 rily thus confined. 



The system of education adapted to farmers, will, with little 

 exception, be adapted to the wants of mechanics and artizans. 



The practical in education will form the basis. That which 

 instructs in arts and in science in its most extended sense, will 

 necessarily be furnished, and the artizan equally with the farmer 

 needs that education. 



I am no advocate for making the work-shop a college, and of ap- 

 prenticing in that college those who are to be practical handi- 

 crafts-men of our country, but it would be rank injustice to 

 exclude them from that education, which a liberal government 

 should provide equally for all. 



The avenue should be opened broad and wide, and then all who 

 choose may enter. 



I have already suggested, that farmers ought to be more fre- 

 quently in our national and State councils, and yet their habitual 

 diffidence, their love of home, and their aversion to political life, 

 are very likely to keep them in retirement. But at home they 

 hold the control of the government, and they have only to draw 

 their check on the public treasury and it would not be protested. 



If your college needs a hundred thousand dollars to begin 

 with, your farmers have but to order the money appropriated and 

 it will be found. Let your Society and the County Societies but 

 once earnestly cake the matter in hand, and it will easily be 

 accomplished. 



To whom do your State funds belong 1 Who pay your taxes ? 

 Who are the most numerous class in your State? And I may 

 enquire, who have been the last to be served in their great inter- 

 ests from the public treasury? 



The response is at once at hand. And will this state of tilings 

 continue. Farmers must answer NO ! 



Mr. President, the problem in self-government which this nation 

 is now working out, is not yet entirely solved. We have, in 

 comparison with other nations of the earth, barely entered upon 



