'J.i 



For all these mischiefs, wliether old or new, it is the duty of 

 every citizen to assist in searching out and applying a remedy. 

 A responsibility rests upon you, farmers, as belonging to the 

 most numerous and to the leading class in our population. 

 Your knowledge also of the worth of money and your general 

 habits of prudence and economy give you peculiar ability to 

 interpose with effect in checking tlie course of private and 

 }»ublic extravagance. The maintenance of a wholesome sim- 

 plicity in living rests peculiarly upon you, and the powerful 

 requirement of exactness and fidelity in every public trust. 



The nature of your pursuit, and the wide and helpful rela- 

 tions it holds with others on every side, give you also opportunity 

 to assert often with effect the great truth of a common interest 

 between all men of every party and class. You ought, there- 

 fore, to stand up for charity, for fairness, for the most exact 

 and scrupulous and considerate regard for the rights of every 

 one of your fellow citizens. And these things you ought to do 

 promptly, boldly, firmly, persistently, stoutly and effectively, 

 •now and always, that the Republic may live and its enemies 

 perish. 



You should choose more of your own number to public office, 

 though there ouglit to be in this no narrowness of action. 

 There are men, farmers, in our own county and throughout the 

 land, of integrity, of breadth and solidity of character, of 

 capacity for the ordering of affairs, amply qualifying them for 

 the responsible posts of government. More of them should 

 be there. 



I have endeavored thus to magnify your calling as farmers, 

 which is indeed honorable and full of opportunity beyond what 

 I have been able to set forth. I congratulate you upon all the 

 evidences of thrift which your yearly exhibitions afford. You 

 are prosperous here. Your former neighbors of the same 

 avocation are entering on the great West ; and they will hold 

 and control those imperial lands. Your calling will not fall 

 from respect and power. I doubt not you will continue to 

 respect it yourselves, and will enter into all its good. 



