THE LATE MR. COKE. 34X 



THE LATE MR. COKE, OF HOLKHAM, ENG. 



TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY AND WORTH, BY HON. ANDREW STEVENSON. 



At their late Anniversary Meeting, Mr. Stevenson met a call from the ancient 

 Agricultural Society of Albemarle to address them ; and all that we have room 

 to say is, that those who heard him ought to be very wise already or must be 

 very hard to move, if they fail to profit by such an appeal to their understanding 

 and their interests. 



The orator exposed in vivid colors the faults that characterize and the doom 

 that seems to await the cultivators of that noble old Commonwealth, and with 

 equal eloquence and truth indicated some of the ways to reform and salvation. 

 But, after ail, if the landed interest does not flourish, if population does not 

 thicken and prosper, and the laud itself»increase in value, it cannot be for want- 

 of knowledge in a community for whom the principles and the implements for 

 right cultivation have been so well explained and illustrated, as they have been 

 for the good people of Albemarle, for the last forty years, by such men as 

 Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, James Barbour, J. M. Garnett, J. H. Cooke, Ruffin, 

 W. C. Rives, the Randolphs and the Minors. Well enough do we know that 

 some will read, with a certain curl of the lip, the names of Jefferson, and Gov. 

 Randolph, and Mr. Madison, as among the benefactors of Agriculture.. With a 

 blended air of triumph and derision, these contemners of book-knowledge ! — of 

 theoretical Agriculture! would point you to their farms and to their balance- 

 sheet of profit and loss ! As well might they say that the Philadelphia glazier, 

 the inventor of the quadrant, not being a practical navigator, could do nothing 

 for the safety of ships and the lives and property they bear. As well might they 

 say that that " idle and incorrigible boy," inventor of the safety-lamp, could add 

 nothing to the mineral resources of a Kingdom, because he was not a practical 

 coal-heaver ! For our humble selves, much prouder should we be to have ex- 

 plained and illustrated, as did the author of the Declaration of Independence, the 

 mechanical principles to be carried out in the form of a mould-hoard — or to have 

 invented, as did Governor Randolph, the hill-side flow — or to have written such 

 beautiful and philosophical addresses as were pronounced by Mr. Madison and 

 Mr. Rives, before the same Society, the former some twenty-eight years back, 

 than to receive a vote of Congress for having, by military stratagem or coup de 

 main, sent 50,000 of our fellow-creatures into eternity. 



No, it cannot be for the want of practical knowledge that such men, of so 

 much general intelligence, so inquisitive, and so well instructed in the art of 

 cultivation, can produce and keep on an area of near 40,000,000 of acres, not 

 one-fifteenth of the number they might clothe— ay, and feed in the bargain. 

 Whence is it, then, that little Massachusetts, with a tenth of her soil, and in 

 nowise to be compared with hers in fertility or climate, is rapidly gaining on 

 Virginia in point of numbers and power, and sending away out of her prolific 

 hive thousands at the same time to populate the West? It cannot be from 

 any natural inertness or sluggishness of the blood in the sons of the Old Do- 

 minion, famous for the high temper and spirit of her men and her horses ; it 

 cannot be for the want of great men, for she has more great men than all 

 New-England united. Without great men to manage her affairs, the afTairs 



(661) 



