88 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Turn now with me to another picture. Egypt has resigned 

 her wonders of art and architecture, to conquering hosts and 

 to destroying time, but not her fertile valleys, nor her groaning 

 sakias ; not her farmers nor her crops of corn, as abundant 

 now as when the sons of Jacob found there relief for famine. 

 India has borne for centuries the exhaustion of ruthless plunder, 

 but her nationality is as strong and her wealth as great to-day, 

 all along her luxuriant hillsides and valleys, cultivated with 

 pious care, as when Clive first entered her palaces and displayed 

 to the simple and astonished Hindoo, the religion and morality 

 of Christian England. Hordes of Mongols and Manchus have 

 overrun China, in vain, for her people have learned by agricul- 

 ture, her boundless resources, and have taken root upon her 

 soil. And in more modern times, England and France have 

 been torn by revolutions, exhausted by wars, but never shaken 

 in their identity, because in each, in different forms, the pos- 

 session of the land lias formed the distinctive feature of its 

 political existence. 



And we shall find this to be true in all permanent forms of 

 government. It is the ownership of the soil which establishes 

 the individuality of every nation. And as has been truly said 

 by one of our most acute and learned statesmen : " Whatever be 

 the political name of a government, it is monarchical in spirit 

 and fact, if the land be held chiefly or in great part by the 

 sovereign, as in Egypt, Russia, or India ; it is aristocratic, if 

 it be held in large estates, by individuals, as in Great Britain 

 or Hungary ; it is democratic if it be extensively distributed 

 among the people for cultivation, as in France or the United 

 States." 



It is agriculture, therefore, which lies at the foundation of 

 all civil organization. It not only designates the form of gov- 

 ernment under which men live, but it supplies those social 

 qualities to which I have referred as the solid support of all 

 human institutions, and presents them as her choicest tribute 

 to the state. It is her wealth which constitutes the material 

 prosperity of a nation. A thousand millions of dollars are 

 drawn annually from the soil of the United States — and even 

 here in Massachusetts, the produce of our thirty-four thousand 

 farms is worth more than all the results of the millions of 

 busy spindles which call into existence those thriving cities 



