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one after another overcome. Ideas, seemingly at first, 

 totally irreconcilable with the prevailing and house- 

 hold usages of a people, come at length to be hospita- 

 bly entertained, and progress is made. There is pro- 

 gress ever. 



Before an audience like that which at present sur- 

 rounds me, I need not speak of the improvements in 

 agriculture among ourselves, including labor-saving 

 implements, modes of tillage, stock and crops, which 

 the last half century has witnessed. They are patent 

 to every eye which can look back fifty years, or which 

 has access to the agricultural literature of the period. 

 Despair of progress is a phrase which should not be 

 found in the Dictionary of the farmer. Every tree, 

 leaf, shrub and flower, and all experience of the past, 

 read him a homily on hope, if he will listen to it. 



The old Agricultural Society of Massachusetts, the 

 oldest State society of this kind among us, and second 

 in time only to the Philadelphia Society, was incorpo- 

 rated in 1792, under the name of the "Massachusetts 

 Society for Promoting Agriculture." When I look 

 into the publications of that society, among the mem- 

 bers of which I read the names of the greatest and 

 wisest men of the day in our Commonwealth, — when 

 I learn the difficulties contended asrainst, the io;norance 

 and prejudices which were to be combatted, — when I 

 consider how much they really performed, — when I 

 compare the agriculture of their day with that of our 

 own, various emotions fill my breast. I am impressed 

 with the sterlinij: merit of the men and the worth of 

 their contributions to the cause of American agricul- 

 ture. I am impressed, too, with the changes which 

 fifty years have brought with them, and with the value 

 of our agricultural literature, scanty as it is. Above 

 all, I am impressed with the grand motives to labor 



