ADDENDA. 



Extract from an Address delivered at the Forty-Seventh Annual 

 Fair of the Housatonic Agricultural Society, at Great Bar- 

 rington, on friday, sept. 28, 1888, by rev. f. h. rowley of 

 North Adams. 



I ask you to consider with me a matter or two that the farmer 

 h:is too often forgotten or ignored. 



And the first is this : His duty to the State, growing out of his 

 relation to it as a citizen. He who taught man's sacred obli- 

 gation to " render unto God the things that are God's," taught 

 also the sacred obligation to " render unto Caesar the things that are 

 Caesar's." In matters of larger interest to the nation's life, in the 

 questions that especially in years of a presidential election are pre- 

 sented for decision, I do not know that the farmer is at all liable to 

 neglect the exercise of his rights of citizenship. But I do know 

 that very often in the questions that arise in State and county poli- 

 tics he fails to come up to the full discharge of his cluty^. Living 

 at some distance from the polling places, he is prone to excuse 

 himself on the ground of other duties or on the plea that it will 

 make no difference whether he fulfills his trust or not. But it does 

 make a difference. This right of citizenship carries with it, my 

 friends, like every other right, its corresponding duty. In return for 

 what the State promises to do for me, must ever hold herself ready 

 to do, I am bound by every law of citizenship, by every principle 

 of manhood and of honor to render unto her a service as faithful, 

 as intelligent as is in my power. In times of war the loyal citizen 

 listens only to this voice of duty. If able-bodied, he lays his loyal- 

 ty on the shoulders of no hired substitute, but takes his own true 

 place right manfully beneath the flag. In times of peace he holds 

 as a sacred trust his right to a voice in her government, and is 

 faithful to his duty to utter that voice in the clearest, wisest man- 

 ner possible to him. Who has any sympathy with that mere apol- 

 ogy for a man, who stays away from the ballot box, who is too 

 indolent or indifferent or utterly misguided to understand his duty 

 to cast an intelligent vote, and then prates and complains of 

 abuses of political power and of corruption in public affairs ? He 



