PROSPERITY AND POWER OF MASSACHUSETTS. 77 



THE PROSPERITY AND POWER OF MAS- 

 SACHUSETTS. 



From an Address before the Middlesex North Agricultural Society. 



BY GEORGE B. LOSING. 



Gentlemen: — I undertake with diffidence and distrust the 

 task which you have imposed upon me. The appropriate cus- 

 tom of our society, fixed by the constitution, by which the 

 chief executive magistrate of the Commonwealth in which our 

 annual session may be held shall be called upon to express his 

 views of our special calling by public address, has done so much 

 to rouse and elevate the agriculture of New England that its 

 omission naturally fills us with profound regret. And while 

 the discussion of agricultural topics may be easy to us who are 

 familiar with them, I feel that I assume a large responsibility 

 when, unaided by high civil position, I endeavor to perform a 

 service which belongs to one whom the people have clothed 

 with the highest honor a State can bestow. 



I speak, therefore, as one of your own number, — as a farmer 

 interested in the development of American agriculture, — be- 

 lieving in the importance of American husbandry, confident in 

 the power of American thought to discover the systems best 

 adapted to a free people, and in the power of American labor 

 to work out, in all its various callings, every social and civil 

 problem which can belong to our material growth, and can 

 affect our moral and intellectual advancement. That you, who 

 are engaged in tilling the soil of New England, have diligently 

 performed your part of this industrial service, the exhibition 

 which is just closing bears witness. The prosperity of these 

 States has suffered no detriment at your hands at least. Equal 

 to the task imposed upon them by severe skies and a rugged 

 soil, superior to the burdens which their patriotic necessities 

 have laid upon their shoulders, diligent themselves in their 



