AGRICULTURAL WANT OF EDUCATION. 83 



a college for the education of their sons, and they ought to 

 bestow its advantages also upon their daughters. They should 

 not regard their most talented children as too good for the 

 profession of their fathers, but should afford them every facility 

 for the best possible preparation to honor and to elevate it. 

 They should resist all attempts to reduce the standard of agri- 

 cultural education, and clearly understand that, if nine years 

 are required to qualify a lawyer, minister or physician for his 

 duties, no farmer can reasonably claim to be thoroughly 

 instructed in his profession, and fit to enjoy full equality with 

 other educated men, who has devoted less than four years to the 

 acquisition of discipline and knowledge. They should take care 

 to be well and truly represented in the general court by men 

 who will see that their college suffers no detriment, and that its 

 essential wants are promptly supplied. 



Every farmer should secure a copy of each annual report of 

 the trustees, that he may learn the facts respecting the real 

 condition and working of the institution, and so be able justly 

 to appreciate its merits, in spite of the unfair criticism which 

 sooner or later assails every enterprise under State direciion, 

 however beneficent its object or judicious its management. 



Mr. President, there can be no more appropriate or eloquent 

 conclusion to these remarks than the peroration of an address 

 on Agricultural Education, delivered before this society in 18-53 

 by the Hon. Henry L. Dawes, who has been so long your illus- 

 trious representative in Congress, and who, in 1862, efficiently 

 aided in securing from the national government a munificent 

 endowment for the very institution for which he then so ably 

 pleaded. May his exhortations and warnings add tenfold force 

 to the words already spoken, and stimulate every farmer present 

 to a faithful performance of his duty towards the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural College and the cause it represents : — 



" Gentlemen, I have sought on this occasion to draw your 

 attention to your position and duties, and to the radical defects 

 and shortcomings in all our struggles to elevate the standard of 

 agriculture in this Commonwealth. I have also attempted to 

 point out the remedy to be a systematic, a thorough and a liberal 

 professional education for the farmer, furnished by the State 

 cooperating with private munificence. And on an institution 

 thus founded and endowed I have endeavored to ground your 



