FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE. 15 



Baldwin, Josiah Quincy, Israel Thorndike, George Cabot, 

 Theodore Lymau, James Warren of Plymouth. The list 

 might easily be extended by adding other contemporary 

 and more modern names, which would in like manner be 

 significant of the character of the membership. Those 

 cited, which mostly or wholly may be found on the pages 

 of the recognized text books of history, will warraat at 

 once a presumption, of which the record gives proof, that 

 from the start the society exerted a wide and effective in- 

 fluence. 



A study of the circumstances amidst which the society 

 began its work brings conviction that those concerned in 

 it were prompted by sentiments of patriotism and philan- 

 thropy. Their method of philanthropy did not intend 

 the bestowment of a dole, but the uplifting to a better 

 self-help of the then chief industrial class of the commu- 

 nity, comprising the bulk of the population. The patriot- 

 ism of the movement may be judged to have had a two- 

 fold relation ; first a desire that the new nation should 

 keep pace with the old father-lands in applications of the 

 useful arts and, secondly, an aim to reach a right solution, 

 through the way of practical wisdom, of the pressing 

 economic questions of the hour. There were no party 

 questions ^involved. Leading men of both parties were 

 in the movement. Discontent prevailed, especially in the 

 middle and western parts of ths State, which had but 

 lately culminated in insurrection, and all over the State 

 there was poverty from the pinch of which few were 

 wholly exempt, and which in miny cases approached to 

 destitution. It was easy to rail at the government and 

 demand less taxes and legislation to shift from particular 

 classes a due share of the burden ; and it mast have been 

 evident to men of the type of those above enumerated 

 that the only solution was in a resort to the primary 

 sources of wealth, thafr then most generally available be- 

 ing the cultivation of the soil. 



