102 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUBB. 



State, or in each State of this Union, woukl be exceedingly lim- 

 ited ; but local societies and travelling lecturers could make an 

 appreciable impression in a year upon the agricultural popula- 

 tion of any State, and in New England the interest in the subject 

 is such that there is no difficulty in founding town clubs, and 

 making them at once the agents of the government and the 

 schools for the people. 



In the plan indicated, I have throughout assumed the dispo- 

 sition of the farmers to educate themselves. This assumption 

 implies a certain degree of education already attained ; for a 

 consciousness of the necessity of education is only developed by 

 culture, learning and reflection. Such being the admitted fact, 

 it remains that the farmers themselves ought at once to insti- 

 tute such means of self-improvement as are at their command. 

 They are, in nearly every State of this Union, a majority of the 

 voters and the controlling force of society and the government ; 

 but I do not from these facts infer the propriety of a reliance on 

 their part upon the powers which they may thus direct. How- 

 ever wisely said, when first said, it is not wise to " look to the 

 government for too much ; " and there can be no reasonable 

 doubt of the ability of the farmers to institute and perfect such 

 measures of self-education as are at present needed. But the 

 spirit in which they enter upon this work must be broad, com- 

 prehensive, catholic. They will find something, I hope, of 

 example, something of motive, something of power, in their 

 experience as friends and supporters of our system of common 

 school education; and something of all these, I trust, in the facts 

 that this system is kept in motion by the self-imposed taxation 

 of the whole people ; that all individuals and classes of men, 

 forgetting their differences of opinion in politics and religion, 

 rally to its support as being in itself a safe basis on wliich may 

 be built whatever structures men of wisdom and virtue and 

 piety may desire to erect, whether they labor first and chiefly 

 for the world that is, or for that which is to come. 



