228 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



that the law cannot reach all his property, and that, because 

 a man is a liar and a rogue, you must let him go and call 

 him an honest man. We have laws against horse stealing. 

 We cannot always execute them. Once in a while a fellow 

 gets away with a horse, but as a general thing we catch the 

 horse thief. As a general rule our horses are perfectly safe 

 in our stables. We go to bed and rest easily because justice 

 is abroad in the land ; the strong arm of the law stands 

 there at our stable door with the sheriff to protect our 

 property. And shall we, as farmers, as men, as citizens of 

 a great republic, quietly pass a few little wishy-washy res- 

 olutions, and then go up and vote the straight ticket? 



It is not class legislation. We do not want legislation 

 for the farmer, we do not want legislation for the Republican, 

 we do not want it for the Democrat, we do not want it for 

 the Mugwump. Let us rise to some sort of dignity as citi- 

 zens of this great Commonwealth and this great nation, and 

 say, " Gentlemen, eternal justice, if we have to get it with 

 the aid of the sheriff and the hangman." We have, in our 

 haste, in our anxiety to get wealth, in our newness, in our 

 want of knowledge of how to govern, — for we lack a good 

 deal in that yet, — we have gone on and simply ignored the 

 wrongs that are easily corrected if we only set our foot 

 down. And I want to repeat again, that the people who are 

 to begin this work are the yeomanry of this country, because 

 in the yeomanry reside more virtue and more democracy 

 than in any other class of people. We are not naturally any 

 better, but our opportunities are better ; our environment 

 has simply made us a little better. The reason why we are 

 a little better than the average saloon-keeper is because we 

 went into farming instead of liquor selling. 



Now, I appeal to the able essayist of the afternoon to 

 know what is the trouble. I go back for knowledge. We 

 find that on the river Nile they had the science of irrigation 

 developed and in practice thousands and thousands of years 

 before ever we thought of it on the western plains. So there 

 is some knowledge lying behind us that is well worthy our 

 careful attention. Joseph went up to Bethlehem to be taxed. 

 Have we found any better way than to go up to the city or 

 the town, and give in an honest schedule of our property, 



