AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 135 



may be hoped. But I am not unmindful of the fact that the 

 tone of popular sentiment seems to require something to be done, 

 upon occasions, which all persons will not accept as pertaining 

 to agriculture. " The agricultural horse trot " (a phrase in- 

 vented by a humorist and largely circulated) has done some- 

 thing to bring societies into disfavor. The phrase itself has 

 done injury in cases where the horse interest has not monopolized 

 the society's energies. But why some encouragement may not 

 be extended to trials of speed, and the breeding of more rapidly 

 going horses, I am unable to understand. There is a demand 

 for such, as legitimate as the demand for faster travel upon rail- 

 ways and steamboats. Familiar with the sensation of rapid 

 motion, a motion which the application of steam to locomotion 

 has taught us to delight in, to go along now in the old way is 

 to seem to go slower than it did in the olden time. Our human 

 life performs a more active circuit than formerly, and it requires 

 of brutes, as well, a quicker pace. I am ready to admit that 

 this effort to go faster, to drive, and to breed horses for this 

 driving community, is attended with many demoralizing in- 

 fluences. A society cannot be too prudent in its management 

 of this horse question ; it must adopt every check to gambling-*- 

 to jockeying ; it must retain as much respectability about it as 

 possible. Large numbers of persons are interested in horses. 

 Should the society refuse this interest countenance, some other 

 will spring up to take the direction of it. It is, I submit, 

 beyond the power of an agricultural society to check this 

 interest, if deemed desirable, but it is within its power to keep 

 control, and exert an influence for good over it. It is for the 

 society to retain control over it for this reason, if for no other ,^- 

 that it may afford the money for useful work in other direc- 

 tions. 



But whatever the society may see fit to do, let it affirm that 

 it will not allow public morals to be corrupted under its auspices. 

 Some follies, in themselves not harmful, may be tolerated in 

 the interest of revenue, but they are to be considered in the 

 light of excrescences, which will drop way and be forgotten in 

 the maturity of the society. 



There are two channels of influence, two distinct but parallel 

 ways, by the following of which, the both better«than either, the 

 society may seek to perform useful service. The one most 



