242 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



made them ; but that we may discover and remove the causes 

 of disease in our -soils and our animals ; that we may make 

 war upon the insects which ravage our fields and orchards, with 

 some more potent agency than our hands and implements ; 

 that we may rescue our crops from those maladies which seem 

 to put a limit to their very existence on the earth ; and that 

 both visible and microscopic organisms will one day be destroyed 

 by antagonistic organisms controlled by man. That this is 

 expecting too much of science, I cannot for a moment believe, 

 supported as she may be by an accumulation of appropriate 

 facts, and guided by accurate experiments. 



And now I turn for a moment, with the deepest interest and 

 the most profound respect to that struggle which science is 

 making to enter the great domain of social and civil economy, 

 and to establish fixed laws by which society and the State may 

 be guided and elevated. Met, as she is, on the very boundary 

 of this domain by every variety of human taste and necessity, 

 by a great diversity of social and civil organization, by all the 

 various opportunities and obligations which attend the geograph- 

 ical divisions, the mountains, and plains, and sea-coasts and 

 islands, by a thousand industries new and old, and by all the 

 established systems of society and State, every one of which 

 virtue irradiates and vice deforms, her task becomes at once 

 difficult, her temptations great, her dangers imminent. If there 

 is any field in which she is to exercise the soberest judgment it 

 is here. If there is any investigation in which facts are to be 

 collected, arranged and weighed, it is where the prosperity, 

 and happiness, and elevation of the human race are concerned. 

 The soundest political philosopher is he who, gathering together 

 all those causes of prosperity, general, diffused, and attended by 

 popular virtue, which history provides, accepts the lesson which 

 they teach, and promulgates the laws which they indicate ; not 

 he who starts with his theories, and bends to them his facts. 

 That virtue and morality attend general prosperity, no one can 

 deny ; that vice waits upon poverty and idleness, is too true, 

 and too sad ; and recorded facts may teach us what has devel- 

 oped the one, and in consequence suppressed the other. If the 

 record of executive power, here or elsewhere, points to encroach- 

 ing dictation; if the history of legislative action is nothing 

 more than the annals of corruption ; if the chapter of civil 



