6 



you feel it most sensibly every day of your lives ; for 

 they, combined with agriculture, contribute your daily 

 bread, and not that alone but also a multitude of com- 

 forts and pleasures that tend to solace the toil of labor 

 and to make life pleasant and desirable. Grateful, then, 

 as the theme would be to the speaker ; wide as is the field 

 it offers for oratorical display; agreeable as it would be 

 to you to listen to a beautiful and harmonious discourse 

 upon it, as you would listen with delight to a strain of 

 glorious music, I, who am but a plain spoken man, and 

 by nature and habit an economist of time, must leave it 

 to others more highly gifted by nature and improved by 

 practice, in the pleasing and winning arts of eloquence. 

 But if I do not appear before you as a rhetorician much 

 less do I stand here to-day as a teacher. I see before me 

 hundreds, perhaps thousands, better qualified to instruct 

 me in the arts of agriculture and mechanics than I am 

 to instruct them, and I shall not be so presumptuous as 

 to attempt to teach my masters. I am fully aware of 

 the wonderful proficiency in agriculture achieved by 

 politicians since the Granger movement began, an acqui- 

 sition of knowledge whose rapidity has no parallel since 

 the Almighty bestowed upon the. apostles the gift of 

 tongues. But as no miracle has been performed in my 

 behalf, my previous ignorance unfortunately remains, 

 and should you see fit to subject me to an examination 

 in either agriculture or mechanics, I very much fear that 

 I should fail to pass, even though your rules were as 

 flexible, convenient and accommodating as those of a 

 civil service commission. 



Without further preface, I propose, my hearers, to 

 offer for your consideration some reflections that have 

 no claim to originality, but which may, nevertheless, bear 

 frequent repetition, and to state some facts in relation to 

 our own country that seem to me to be worthy of your 

 attention . 



