28o BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



In the lirst place, the pohtical and individual importance 

 of each one of these little republics keeps it alive. In the 

 United States of Connecticut there are i68 sovereign units, 

 each of them having the individuality and self importance of a 

 South Carolina. Each of them has for its motto : " Nemo me 

 lacessit impune " — beware of treading on my corns ! This 

 sensitiveness is still further accentuated as follows: Ninety- 

 five of our one hundred and sixty-eight towns elect a majority 

 of our General Assembly. Yet they contain but eleven per 

 cent, of our population. Mark Twain remarked recently that 

 he would like to cast his whole voting strength for Jerome, 

 giving him one for Mark and two for Twain. But the voting 

 strength of the average villager, compared with the rest of 

 the State is more than three, without resort to repeating or 

 humor. Union elects the same number with sixty-one votes 

 that New Haven does with 11,478-; that is to say, there is 188 

 times more fun voting in Union than in the City of Elms. 



Secondly, the small town has a future because of its agri- 

 cultural and rustic intrinsic worth. I am aware that much 

 has been written and more believed about the abandoned farms 

 of Connecticut, but when you come to look for them, you will 

 find they are like Goldsmith's Deserted Village — not on the 

 map. Somebody has been romancing at our expense, and our 

 reply should be like that of the vigilance committee in Texas, 

 ^who having hanged a suspect for horse stealing and discover- 

 ing immediately that he was innocent, concluded that etiquette 

 required an apology to his widow, to whom resorting, the cap- 

 tain explained the mistake, closing with the words, " Madam, 

 the joke is on us." 



Now it is true, as Professor Charles S. Phelps, recently 

 of Storrs, has pointed out, that many Connecticut areas were 

 never designed to support a progressive system of agriculture, 

 and their return to forest is but a natural reversion. De- 

 cline in New England is limited to such areas. But in the 

 valleys and within hauling distance of markets progression is 

 manifest. The common impression that Connecticut farming 

 as a whole is declining is a mistake. The General Assembly 

 of 1845 ordered a special farm census, which gives us a basis 

 for comparison, and shows, that while the staple crops, such 

 as wheat, oats, rye, and corn, have diminished, the loss is more 

 than made good by orchard, garden, dairy and meadow. The 



