AGRICULTURE AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 17 



Britain and Ireland are carefully computed at one hundred and 

 forty million dollars. There is no direction in which ingenuity 

 has of late been oftener or more effectively exercised in the 

 industrial arts, than in contriving modes by which the dross, the 

 shavings, the chips, all the unassimilated residues that remain 

 after the completion of the main product, arc converted to some 

 profitable use. But there is no problem to which the ingenious 

 mind could turn itself with greater advantage, than that of 

 utilizing sewage. The invention of a plan, by which the slime 

 and sediment of cities may be transformed into corn and wheat 

 for human sustenance and the vigor of the vegetating earth be 

 perpetually renewed, gives scope for one of the most beneficent 

 systems of economy ever devised. The revenues of a kingdom 

 would be a cheap equivalent for such a plan ; the statesman, 

 seeking for his country unfailing sources of prosperity ; the 

 sanitary physician, striving to convert the fountains of disease 

 and pestilence into fountains of life and strength ; the farmer, 

 anxious to invigorate his exhausted lands ; the chemist, eager 

 to give new proofs of the resources of his favorite science ; the 

 engineer, who would render a public service, can afford to give 

 this subject his deepest thought and care. 



The intimate connection that exists between the prosecution 

 of the arts of mechanical and manufactuxing industry and the 

 progress of a nation, needs no illustration in this city, county or 

 Commonwealth. The theme is a familiar one. The annual 

 manufactures of Massachusetts, valued at two hundred and 

 sixty-six million dollars, and structures like these we see around 

 us here, distributed throughout her borders, are works that 

 manifest her sturdy faith. This faith she has cherished along 

 with her love of knowledge and of freedom ; or rather these are 

 the phases of her humane and earnest love of progress. In a 

 diffused and .diversified national industry, and an exchange of 

 its products by an unfettered domestic commerce, she has ever 

 striven to establish tlie firm safeguards of independence, — union 

 and liberty. How wisely she strove, how unwisely her counsels 

 were neglected, let the witness be the mad rebellion that now 

 rages ; which was nourished into being by the hope of aid from 

 foreign states ; which seeks to destroy the Union, and to found 

 an empire based on slavery ; and which began in the confident 

 belief of its leaders that one single crop raised on Southern 

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