18 



in laudable competition for superiority in their productions ,and 

 ingenuity, and giving the results of your investigations to the world 

 higher objects await your efforts, and invite your attainment. You 

 will bear with me, I trust, while I offer such suggestions on this in- 

 teresting topic as shall appear germain to the occasion. 



Agricultural education should attract largely your attention ; and 

 it is a subject whiqh will bear a little examination. The pittance of 

 $8,000 a year is now doled out of your public treasury, a bare re- 

 cognition only of the importance and value of agricultural associations, 

 of which the stipend of $700 is paid to your Society. To call this 

 State bounty, which we in courtesy do, is little better than mockery. 

 Forty thousand dollars a year would now be less, compared with the 

 wealth and resources of the State, than $10,000 in 3819. Why, 

 gentlemen, the annual appropriations to agricultural advancement 

 from the State Treasury, is less than that given to three of your col- 

 leges, where less than two hundred students yearly graduate. Appro- 

 priations amounting to more than $500,000 of public money have 

 been made by law for the endowment of colleges; and your Litera- 

 ture Fund is still annually drawn upon to the amount of $15,000 in 

 contributing to their support, while their halls remain a sealed book 

 to him who looks only to agriculture as the profession of his life ; 

 and of the thousands who there receive the bounty of the State in 

 aid of their education, not a tithe of them in the course of their lives 

 add a dollar to the physical or productive wealth of the country. 

 The common school, or the village academy is the only institution 

 where the young farmer gains admittance ; and even there, as at 

 present constituted, he hardly acquires an idea of the rudest elements 

 of his future profession, or of those studies which properly belong 

 to it. 



These remarks are not made in a querulous or fault-finding temper. 

 It is right that we have colleges, and academies for the few who as- 



