322 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



necessary, you have the legal right, in a proper and prudent man- 

 ner, to do it; but if you do not act properly and prudently, you 

 are answerable for all the consequences, even the destruction of 

 villages and cities. 



I will say but a single word in relation to another kind of tres- 

 pass. If any man enters upon another man's garden or field, after 

 having been once forbidden, he is liable to a fine of five dollars. 

 Should he take fruit from any tree, he is not strictly, at common 

 law, holden for larceny, but he is held, under a special statute, for 

 an offence about equal to larceny. By a statute passed in 1869, 

 our Legislature enacted, that any person entering upon any or- 

 chard, fruit garden, vineyard, or any field or enclosure wherein is 

 cultivated any domestic fruit whatever, and plucking any of the 

 fruit, shall be fined $20 and costs, and imprisoned not less than 

 thir*^y days ; and each owner or person employed in such orchard 

 or gai'deu is created a constable to arrest the offender, and carry 

 him before a magistrate or other tribunal, that he may be properly 

 punished. 



Cruelly to Animals. 



There is another matter which our Legislature in 1869 took up 

 which has struck me with a great deal of force. It had called out 

 legislation in other States, and is a great step in moral, humane, 

 and religious progress. The Sacred Word informs us that "the 

 righteous man regardeth the life of his beast." That most tender 

 hearted poet that ever lived, that man whose effusion was almost 

 angelic — Cowper, says 



"I would not enter on my list of friends 



(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, 



Yet wanting sensibility) the man 



Who needlessly sots foot upon a worm. 



An inadvertent stop may crush the snail 



That at eve crawls along the path; 



But ho that has humanity, forewarned, 



Will tread aside, and let the reptile live." 



Human slavery in this country was a blasting and impoverishing 

 institution to the soil on which it was planted, bad for those who 

 practiced it, and bad for those who, with less interest in it felt 

 bound to uphold it; but for that reason alone, slavery would not 

 have been abolished in tliis country for a hundred years. It was 

 that'feeling in the heart of every man, that " liglit wliich lightcth 

 every man that cometh into the world," that feeling thut it was 

 wrong and cruel to hold human beings in bondage, the tears that 



