ADDRESS 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : 



When the farmers throw down the trophies of their 

 twelvemonth's pacific campaign before the public, and so 

 put their husbandry on exhibition, they virtually challenge 

 a public criticism. Leaving, then, for a day, the natural 

 privacy of their profession, they make confession of larger 

 relationships. They acknowledge amenableness to those 

 common standards of judgment that try the whole man- 

 hood. It will be only according to the liberties, if not 

 indeed the rights, of the jubilee, therefore, if we hold 

 their calling up into the light of those catholic claims 

 imposed by the thinking and the policy, the conscience 

 and the affections of humanity, in these times. Perhaps I 

 may find an intimation that you prefer what suggestions 

 are to be offered here should follow this liberal course, in 

 the fact that you have invited a voice from outside your 

 own regular ranks — shall I say the voice of a deserter, 

 or an exile, or an admiring ally ] — to address you. 



To aid my purpose, let us take the farmer on his own 

 domain. Let us go back and meet him on the farm. 

 Suppose that, standing there in some interval of his work, 

 he looks up and about him : he will very likely notice four 

 familiar objects in his scenery — because they are the 

 Common monuments of our Puritan inheritance, and the 

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