28 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



unity ill diversity, permit me to pay a momentary but parting 

 admonition to the necessity of a large agriculture. We have 

 in Massachusetts about the same proportiou of persons engaged 

 in the cultivation of the earth as is returned by the English 

 abstracts ; and the smallest extent of the products of the land 

 which would be proportionate to the magnitude of other depart- 

 ments, should be, not forty millions, but an hundred millions. 

 The agriculture of the State has every inducement for a larger 

 development, which can be derived from the most minute 

 organization of its industry, and from the most complete ex- 

 pansion of its powers of consumption. And the time has now 

 come when manufactures and trade will require but little 

 further encouragement, — they will take cai'6 of themselves, — 

 but it is agriculture, it is agriculture, which must achieve 

 higher advances, or degeneracy will begin its work. If we 

 expect to maintain the position we have acquired in the com- 

 munity of States, or to hold unimpaired the adjustment and 

 symmetry of our social character, we must preserve in its full 

 vigor the element of an agricultural population, — responsive to 

 tiie growth of other departments, and irradiating the future, as 

 it has irradiated the past, with the lustre of its patriotism and 

 integrity, its sobriety and frugality, its virtue and religion. 

 And especially in the present epoch of uncertainty and change, 

 when the gilded prizes of trade so frequently crumble to ashes, 

 and the riches of skill and art so easily take to themselves 

 wings, let us hope that the fifty thousand farmers of the State 

 will hold fast to their profession, — that they will remain them- 

 selves, and that others will join them in the safe and serene 

 paths that were marked out by the Divine hand in the beginning 

 of all things. With a Commonwealth thus organized and 

 classified, — the masterly energies and comprehensive grasp of 

 its manufactures, and arts, and commei*ce, resting on the pure 

 and solid base of an unfailing and increasing agriculture, — and 

 all blending in the culture of those charities which impart even 

 to present life a beneficence that is imperishable, — we may 

 fondly hope to repeat, in our experience from year to year, the 

 happy and lofty climax of the poet: — 



" Man is tlie noblei* plant this realm supplies, 

 And souls are ripened in these Northern skies." 



