THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 85 



the teaching force of the College below its present limits. 

 One professorship, as already stated, has been vacated by 

 the action of the trustees during the past year, for the ex 

 press purpose of keeping the expenses within the income; 

 but it must be evident that this reduction cannot be carried 

 further without great injury to the reputation of the institu- 

 tion. The studies to be pursued must be such in variety, 

 in extent, and in value, as shall meet in good faith the re- 

 quirements of the Act of Congress to which we are indebt- 

 ed for the original endowment. It must be presumed that 

 in accepting the grant, and obligating itself to fulfil its con- 

 ditions, the State meant to do it honorably, and to comply 

 with the spirit as well as with the letter of the Act. 



No one can fail to see, in reading the conditions of the 

 grant, that it implies something more than the maintenance 

 of a mere manual labor school. The very name of " College " 

 implies a broader and more generous culture: it implies a 

 place of education for the young. Whatever the institution 

 may do in the way of affording models of farming for the 

 public, or in searching for new facts, or the investigation of 

 scientific principles applied to agriculture, must be secon- 

 dary, and subordinate to the main objects, which the very 

 name given in the Act of Congress implies. The leading 

 and prominent idea conveyed is that learning and labor, 

 science and practice, are to meet in a more profitable life 

 upon the farm ; that the chief aim shall be to develop the 

 man in the farmer, and to develop farming through the man 

 engaged in it. This means discipline, which lies at the foun- 

 dation of all genuine education : it means that we are to do 

 something to educate the mind as well as the hand, to make 

 intelligent men and good citizens, and this object has been 

 kept constantly in view. 



It is to be borne in mind, that, at the time the College was 

 founded, there were no models in this country by which our 

 early steps could be guided. Many institutions of the kind 

 had been established and maintained by most of the govern- 

 ments of Europe, and some of them were broader in scope 

 than our own ; but they could hardly furnish any complete 

 guide for us in circumstances so widely different. Mistakes 

 might, therefore, have reasonably been expected. But what- 

 ever mistakes may have been made by the trustees, acting 



