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is legion are performed by those whose occupations have been chiefly 

 in other channels, and whose agricultural tastes have led them into 

 the spirit of improving it. And in how many examples have we 

 witnessed the apathy, if not determined opposition with which the 

 farmer proper or at least he who claimed to be one has set his face 

 like flint against their adoption, even after their superiority had been 

 demonstrated beyond a question ! 



So, too, with the farmer's education. They have been content that 

 the resources and the bounty of the State should be lavished upon the 

 higher seats of learning, where the more aspiring of our youth should re- 

 ceive their benefits, not caring even to inquire whether such youth should 

 again return among them to reflect back the knowledge thus acquired. 

 They have failed to demand from the common treasure of the State 

 those necessary institutions which shall promote their own particular 

 calling, and which every other pursuit and profession in the land has 

 been most active to accomplish. In all this the latter have progressed 

 with railway speed ; while the farming interest has stood still with 

 folded arms, and done comparatively nothing ; and what good has 

 been forced upon it by others, even regarded with suspicion. It is 

 not because we as farmers, compared with others, are either ignorant 

 or stupid. We only neglect to assert our rights, and appropriate the 

 share to which we are entitled in the common patronage of the State 

 to the benefit of our own professions. It is for us to ask to will to 

 do it. We hold the power of the State by our numbers. We can 

 control the halls of legislation. We can so direct the laws that we 

 may share equal advantages hi our institutions with others. We de- 

 sire nothing exclusively to our own advantage, but we do deserve an 

 equal participation in those institutions established for the common 

 benefit of all. 



