AGRICULTURAL HALL. 67 



have attained in other and different pursuits. To this work of 

 improvement — real, substantial and beneficial — we devote this 

 edifice. Here shall our children and our children's children 

 assemble, year after year, to do homage to that immense interest 

 which sustains all the other affairs of civilized states. 



There never was a time, in the history of our country, 

 perhaps of the world, when the controlling importance of agri- 

 culture was so apparent as now. Well may we come up to our 

 temples to pay our vows and renew our pledges to this imperial 

 interest of civilization. Well may those who are the earnest 

 and laborious devotees of husbandry be proud of the position 

 they hold. Throughout the world, to-day, agriculture is king! 

 It governs all things. And as states rise in the scale of human 

 progress, so does this great interest rise in relative importance. 

 When other affairs become embarrassed or depressed, this 

 becomes buoyant and dominant. It was said of the great New 

 England statesman, whose love for this ennobling pursuit 

 renders his " counterfeit presentment " a fit ornament of this 

 place, " that it is matter of notoriety that the fear or the 

 prospect of a short crop in England deranges and agitates the 

 business transactions and commercial speculations of the whole 

 trading world." We well know that the fact of abundant 

 harvests here, and that of small crops in some parts of Europe, 

 to-day, keeps England at bay, and holds the entire spirit of 

 toryisra at defiance. But we need not look beyond the Atlantic 

 to find full proof of what has been asserted. To-day, while 

 the life of our Repul)lic is menaced, while fearful war is raging 

 over a tiiird of our States, while so large a proportion of our pro- 

 ducing population is in arms, and are changed to mere con- 

 sumers, the agriculture of the north and north-west is bearing 

 up the country in its stalwart arms, and carrying it safely along 

 to assured triumph and permanent victory. True it is here, 

 to-day, that agriculture is king; imperial in its power, but at 

 the same time so benignant in its supremacy, that all the world. 

 pays willing homage at its feet. While we are struggling to 

 maintain the life of our government, fighting the battle of 

 humanity and free institutions in this terrible encounter, the 

 country turns with confidence, never to be disappointed, to the 

 farmers of the temperate north, and, resting on their labors and 

 sacrifices, is upborne along its pathway, bristling with the 

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