POSSUNT QUIA POSSE YIDENTUR. 335 



that you have a good business, you probably will be among 

 the successful ones. Just so with eveiy branch of business. 

 The energetic, the industrious, the persevering, will succeed. 

 Said Governor Bullock at the reunion of the legislature of 1862, 

 after extolling that assembly of representative men in high 

 terms, " I ought not to conclude this strain of partiality for one 

 popular assembly without admitting that there are at all times 

 those in our community whose measure of wit and satire is sat- 

 isfied in speaking of the general court in terms quite the oppo- 

 site of those I have learned to use, but I think you rarely 

 find one of those persons who was ever known to decline an 

 opportunity of election to the House or who would be eminently 

 useful if he should happen to be chosen." There are those who 

 are constantly croaking and complaining, who are ready to say 

 they wished the rich were obliged to divide with them. Would 

 this change their character ? Would they not still complain, 

 and five years hence call for a new division ? Let every man 

 leave his neighbor and attend to himself ; leave his neighbor's 

 business and attend to his own. Let every one strive to make 

 the world richer and better, that he has lived in it, and we 

 sliould hear less of the complaint that " farming won't pay." 

 Try it, and try it with a feeling that it does pay. 



The sacred page tells us that, " He that tilleth the land 

 shall have plenty of bread." . We find this to be the first busi- 

 ness of every nation, its main support. If this fails, all fails. 

 All must have their daily bread. If the land does not produce, 

 the merchant cannot move his goods, ships would rot at our 

 wharves, steam cars would not stalk through the land ; in fact, 

 all other business would be of no avail. But with a productive 

 soil, and careful and well directed labor, all the other industries 

 will flourish. Agriculture was the first business of Massachu- 

 setts, as of the nation ; and with the stand she has taken in 

 the history of the nation, with the influence she has exerted 

 through its whole length and breadth, and the world, in a moral 

 and intellectual point of view, with her common schools and 

 other institutions of learning, with her charitable institutions, 

 with her men, who from the earliest history of the nation to the 

 present time have sent their influence far and wide, who have 

 taken the lead in all the industries of the nation, — shall we 

 abandon her agriculture, and allow her to decline in this direc- 



