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pire to the higher walks of professional or scientific life, as well as 

 common schools for the million. No State can be well, or wisely 

 constituted without them, and I would not abate one jot or tittle from 

 the wholesome support which a broad and liberal system of education 

 demands. But we should claim, and insist, that departments devoted 

 to agricultural teaching, or to the development of agricultural sci- 

 ence, should be established, either as branches of our seats of learn- 

 ing, or as independent institutions. Why should not the farmer be 

 educated to the top of his faculties, as well as those who select what 

 are termed the learned professions as their pursuit ? If our sons 

 cannot be taught the education they seek in the colleges and there 

 are well grounded doubts of this fact from the moral malaria too 

 often existing within and around them institutions for their sole edu- 

 cation should be aided, or erected, and endowed by the State. This 

 subject has been annually debated in your meetings for years past ; 

 but influenced by a strange timidity, no decided action beyond a for- 

 mal and altogether harmless expression of opinion has been effected. 

 I beseech you, gentlemen, to look at this matter. The real and per- 

 sonal property of this State is more than one thousand millions of 

 dollars. Nominally, in the assessors returns, it is rated at less than 

 650 millions. In these returns, it is notorious that real estate is not 

 assessed at over two-thirds its real value, and it is safe to say, that 

 owing to the imperfect and partial system of taxation, not one-half 

 the personal property of the State, comparatively little of which is 

 held by the farmer, is taxed at all ; and in its practical operation, ag- 

 ricultural capital pays two to one over that devoted to other purpo- 

 ses. Yet with all this burthen on its back, the farming interest either 

 stands back from your halls of legislation abashed, although nominal- 

 ly represented there by its members; or if plucking a momentary 

 courage by the congregation of its numbers on an occasion like the 

 present, it literally shrinks away, either ashamed to ask its rights, or 



