34 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ancient splendor. Venice has long since sunk. But Egypt still 

 has her granaries and crops, as when the sons of Jacob sojourned 

 there to procure food for their improvident tribe. China has 

 been devoted to agriculture for more centuries than are recorded 

 in human annals ; and her empire is now opened to reveal the 

 astonishing wealth of her rural population and the superior 

 excellence of her farming. France has been borne by her 

 farmers through revolution after revolution, filled with that 

 recuperative energy which belongs to that people who cling to 

 the soil. England owes her stability not to her mills, which 

 totter before every starving mob which a civil convulsion rouses 

 to madness, not to her ships dependent upon the prosperity of 

 others for their activity and profit, not to her banks which 

 fluctuate with the rise and fall of every military movement or 

 every financial crisis ; but to her lands, to those homes of a 

 rural population, to the broad acres groaning with the weight 

 of crops — the wealth of accurate, systematic, careful and 

 vigorous agriculture. 



In our own land, the large majority of the people, the great 

 mass of wealth, the largest part of the energy, are devoted to 

 tilling the earth in some form or another. The number of 

 farms in our own State is about 36,000— $109,000,000 is 

 invested in these farms alone, over $3,000,000 in tools and 

 machinery — $9,600,000 in live stock. The amount invested in 

 Yarms in this State is usually about one-sixth of the whole 

 amount invested in manufactures throughout the Union. 



I state these striking facts to show you that you belong to a 

 most important branch of the business of the world — to that 

 business without which the prosperity of peace would be 

 blighted, and the adversity of peace would become intolerable — 

 without which no civil institutions could exist, and which is the 

 only national support in times of strife. I think you will agree 

 with me, therefore, that an agricultural population should be 

 the most successful, the most reliable, the most intelligent, the 

 most industrious, the most grateful to that kind Providence 

 whose goodness is always spread before them in abundant and 

 large luxuriance, the most prudent and careful amidst all these 

 bounties. 



In order to discharge the duty which devolves upon a member, 

 of this most substantial and least precarious of all branches of 



