R. C. WINTHTIOFS ADDRESS. 637 



with so little pecuniary remuneration for so great an outlay of 

 time, talents and capital ? I tell you. nay. 



New worlds of discovery in the tillage of the soil lie before 

 the generations that succeed us, which will never be disclosed 

 to our eyes ; — inventions for facilitating the cultivation of the 

 earth, and for increasing its production to meet the wants of 

 the gathering millions that will one day crowd it ; — discoveries 

 that would startle even this age of wonders. We may not 

 live to see it ; — no, we shall have passed " that bourne, whence 

 no traveller returns ;" but it is in the womb of time. What 

 the fierce steam-horse, whose eyes are fire, and whose breath is 

 as the blast of death, — who howls along the hill side, and 

 rushes beneath movmtains with the resistless fury of the whirl- 

 wind and the terrible strength of the storm, — is to the ancient 

 stage-coach, that, "like a wounded snake, drags its slow 

 length along," shall be the doings of our sons, as compared to 

 our own. 



WHAT GOVERNMENT OUGHT TO DO FOR 

 AGRICULTURE. 



[Extracts from an Address, delivered before the Bristol County Agricidturcd 

 Society at its last Fair, Oct. 15, 1852. By Hon. R. C. Winthrop.] 



And now, having said thus much, and the limits of this 

 Address will not allow me to say more, both in regard to what 

 government cannot do for American agriculture, and also as 

 to what it actually has done in the past, I come to a brief con- 

 sideration of what it can do, and what it ought to do, in the 

 future. 



In the first place, it can adopt systematic, comprehensive, 

 and permanent measures for ascertaining from year to year, 

 or certainly from census to census, the actual condition of our 

 country in relation to agriculture, the quantity of land under 

 cultivation, the proportion of cultivated land devoted to the 

 production of different articles of food, the relation of produc- 

 tion to population in the various States and in the country at 

 large, the comparative productiveness of the same crops in dif- 



