320 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



on almost endlessly to illustrate the hardships of a system 

 that, in many cases, is like the tax on mortgages, a donble 

 exaction, but this is not the time nor the place to exhaust 

 the subject. 



What I have said may open a fresh line of thought to 

 you, and raise many important questions in your minds. 

 Perhaps none will be more pertinent than to ask, such being 

 the state of things, what have our senators and representa- 

 tives in Congress been about, that these abuses have now 

 gone on these many years, without protest or remonstrance 

 on their part, nay, even with apologies and defence? 

 They may think only of the wealthy iron companies, the 

 machine makers, the cotton and woollen manufacturers, of 

 those who have their capital in mines, in banks, and in land- 

 grant railroads, but not of you. Perhaps they do not know 

 enough ; perhaps they owe their election to the men who 

 rally their work-people to the polls on the cry that the 

 protection to their business is in danger, and that the wages 

 of their operatives are threatened, and that the mills must 

 close. They say nothing about the fear for their own large 

 dividends and immense profits, but strive to leave all the 

 burdens upon the shoulders of the agriculturist. 



Much, very much more, could be said ; much about the 

 dwarfing of our commerce and the decline of shipping ; for 

 none can say, when eighty-four and a half per cent, or nearly 

 seventeeu-twentieths of our foreign commerce is done under 

 foreign flags, and when the stars and stripes have almost dis- 

 appeared from the ocean, that protection and navigation laws 

 have promoted our growth and prosperity in this direction. 

 It is, however, enough in itself to awaken our serious reflec- 

 tion to repeat, that the exports of agricultural products from 

 the United States were last year 552,000,000 dollars, forming 

 seventy-five per cent, of the whole ; that the returns of these 

 exports in foreign goods paid a taxof 216,000,000 dollars, and 

 that the surplus revenue from all sources, applied to the 

 premature payment of the public debt, over and above all 

 the extravagance of expenditure at Washington, was 145,- 

 000,000 dolhirs. 



Why should this tremendous sum be exacted annually 

 from the hard-working people of this country? Who grow 

 rich by it ? Look around you and you will see that it is not 



