you, but in all of which you could entertain and instruct me ; 

 and it cannot be, that of such things you would have me 

 speak. 



It were easy, also, to address you Upon the dignity of 

 labor ; upon the independence, that goes with tilling the soil ; 

 upon agriculture, as the primal source of accumulation ; as the 

 foundation of the social state, upon which all other arts and 

 trades and professions rest ; but I am quite sure, that you have 

 not invited me here to flatter you or to eulogize j^our voca- 

 tion, and, certainly, I shall not so far forget myself, nor so fail 

 in respect for you, as to make this platform a stump, from 

 which to try to tickle j^ou or to aggrandize myself. 



I might — indeed I should be wholly neglectful of duty did 

 I not — congratulate you upon the changed condition of pub- 

 lic affairs. Through several succeeding years your Society 

 held its annual festival in tears — in sorrow, though in hope — 

 over a torn, distracted, belligerent country. This — the fair- 

 est fabric of human government — was shaken — the last 

 hope of the friends of civil liberty all over the world — was 

 imperilled. Over an extent of territory never before equalled, 

 and on a scale of terrible grandeur never approached — war — 

 civil — fraternal — war was raging with an intensity impossible 

 before to conceive ; the whole land red with the blood of 

 brothers ; the heavens all lurid with the smoke and the flame 

 rising from a thousand battle fields ; the stoutest hearts were 

 quailing and at times the hopes of men seemed to be going 

 out. But how changed ! Instead, since your last annual 

 meeting — nay even since I so recently accepted your invi- 

 tation — the proper and rightful authority has proclaimed from 

 his high place " that peace, order, tranquility and civil au- 

 thority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United 

 States of America." How infinite the contrast ! And, now, 

 after this terrible convulsion, and even before the tears have 

 been dried, which were shed over so much of devotion and 

 consecration of health and life to a country worthy of it all, 

 "we have a partial relief iu some matters oH giatuhition, which 



