just appropriated $7000 for barn, sheds, ice-house, concrete side- 

 walks, tire apparatus, and heating appliances for the drill hall; 

 in April accepted the act of Congress concerning experiment sta- 

 tions, and has also appropriated $6500 for a laboratory building at 

 the Massachusetts State Agricultural Experiment Station at Am- 

 herst. 



At the accession of President Goodell, Charles Henry Fernald was 

 elected professor of comparative anatomy and veterinary science, and 

 Charles Swan Walker professor of moral and social science. And 

 Henry E. Alvord, formerly detailed as professor of military science, 

 returned to the college which he loved, as professor of agriculture. 



And now, gentlemen, at the end of a quarter of a century since 

 the passage of the beneficent law we celebrate, with its author on our 

 grounds, whom we were so glad to welcome yesterday,* let us remem- 

 ber that it is not quite twenty years since the college was opened, 

 but we have time enough to review the past, to ask what mistakes 

 we have made, what trials we have survived, and to -see whether we 

 have encouragement for the future. 



One crisis of the college was in 1870, when an attempt was made 

 by resolve, to disown the college, to renounce and discard it like an 

 abandoned child thrown upon its own resources. There is a law 

 human as well as divine, that parents shall support their offspring at 

 least during helplessness. Let it never be forgotten, and I pray you 

 to urge the consideration always, that this college is the child of the 

 state, which is bound by the highest obligations of honor, by avow- 

 als, before all the world, in consideration of the 'gift by Congress of 

 390,000 acres of land, to ;k support and maintain at least one college 

 where the leading object shall be * * to teach such branches of 

 learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts." This 

 grant was made on a condition, and the state accepted the act with 

 that condition. The state therefore cannot discard the child. It 

 has agreed to ki support and maintain" it. It is the state's college, 

 ct the Massachusetts Agricultural College." The land is the property 

 of the state. The trustees are merely agents of the state, and there- 

 fore like any agents entirely subject to the orders of their principal. 

 It is for that reason, if there were no others, that the State Board of 

 Agriculture are properly made the overseers of the college ; for this 

 reason the state very properly should appoint the trustees, limit their 

 powers, and render them liable for wilful excess of expenditure. 



*Mr. Morrill was called by telegram to Washington by the severe illness of his son. 



