SECRETARY'S REPORT. 115 



veneration tlian ever for the science of agriculture. When the 

 rebel spirits of the South, whose only precedent for their foul 

 deed was found in that primeval revolt, which " peopled vastly 

 hell," and led to " man's first disobedience and his fall," raised 

 their infernal flag against this sacred Union, — when ])y the 

 suddenness, the extent, and the virulence of their demonstra- 

 tions, trade, commerce, manufactures, and every free institution 

 was threatened, the farming interest stood forth with a prom- 

 inence heretofore unequalled. It was felt that the farmers of 

 the North and West could send out their thousands to the 

 battle-field, and from their harvest fields could not only sustain 

 themselves and their armies, but could feed, if necessary, the 

 starving millions of that nation from which we sprung, but 

 which has not shown to us in our liour of trouble, the sympathy 

 we had a right to expect. 



There was never a time in our history when it was more 

 imperative on the people to study closely their agriculture ; to 

 raise to the fullest extent all paying crops ; to practice in all 

 respects the strictest economy ; and, restricting superfluities 

 and luxuries, to return to some extent to the frugality, the 

 simplicity, the virtue of earlier years, from which we have 

 wonderfully departed. 



History teaches us how gradually a prosperous and thriving 

 people, rising from the bare necessities of life to required 

 comforts, pass to coveted conveniences, lapse into enervating 

 luxuries, and decline into national dissipation and vice, 

 " touched by the mortal finger of decay," they crumble by 

 their own corruption, or are swept by some more fresh and 

 vigorous successor out of their existence. 



Who shall say that the all-wise Ruler of nations has not 

 suffered this monstrous and unnatural rebellion to raise its 

 matricidal hand against this benign government for the purpose 

 of developing courage, self-denial and patriotism, those stern 

 virtues that made our fathers successful and us great, and to 

 save us from the fate of Imperial Rome once the mistress of the 

 world, to be forever lost among nations, or to sink into our 

 original position as an English dependency. 



James S. Grennell. 

 Freeman Walker. 

 John C. Bartlett. 



