INTRODUCTION. XI 



measures only as are essential to the general welfare, and 

 such as cannot properly be accomplished by any more cir- 

 cumscribed authority. More liberal and enlarged grants 

 from the people, give to the state legislatures the power of 

 doing all which their constituents choose to have effected 

 for their own benefit. 



Education in all its branches, is under their exclusive 

 control ; and to endow and foster every institution which 

 has a tendency to raise and improve the intellectual, the 

 moral, and the social condition of the people, has ever been 

 their cherished policy. Yet up to this time, no institution 

 expressly designed for the professional education of farmers, 

 has ever been established in this country. That far-seeing 

 wisdom which characterizes the consummate statesman, and 

 which regards the future equally with the present and past, 

 has halted upon the threshold of the great temple of agri- 

 cultural science, whose ample and enduring foundations have 

 been commenced by the united efforts of the men of genius 

 throughout both hemispheres. To aid with every means in 

 their power in laying these foundations broad and deep, to 

 elevate its superstructure, to rear its mighty columns, and 

 adorn its graceful capitals, would seem most properly to 

 come entirely within the province of the representatives of 

 intelligent freemen, the great business of whose lives is the 

 practice of agriculture. 



In addition to continuing and making more general and 

 comprehensive the encouragement for other objects hereto- 

 fore considered, it is the duty of each of the larger states of 

 the Union, liberally to endow and organize an Agricultural 

 College, and insure its successful operation within Its juris- 

 diction. Connected with these, should be example and ex- 

 perimental farms, where the suggestions of science should be 

 amply tested and carried out before submitting them to the 

 public. The most competent men at home and abroad 



