4 MR. HUNTINGTON S ADDRESS. 



set apart for these purposes, and have found them 

 attended with highly beneficial results. The mer- 

 chants have their chambers of commerce, boards 

 of trade, and mercantile associations — those en- 

 gaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits have 

 their institutes and societies — the learned profes- 

 sions have similar organizations — and why should not 

 the farmers have theirs also ? If agriculture, the 

 mother of the arts — being coeval and coexistent 

 with the civilization of the race in all past genera- 

 tions — being the primeval trunk of which all other 

 departments of human industry are the branches, and 

 forming the foundation and support of all the great 

 economical interests of society, in its just and true 

 development and expansion, be not worthy of the 

 highest regard of all, and especially of its more im- 

 mediate ministers and professors, then there is no 

 pursuit or employment in life, which can claim a mo- 

 ment's consideration. Being first in time, and in 

 the natural constitution of things, it is paramount to 

 all in importance. Connecting and blending itself 

 with all the ramifications of human industry, in their 

 endless varieties, by the golden chain of a mutual 

 interest, and imparting to all vitality and strength, 

 from its own inexhaustible resources and fullness, it 

 may justly be deemed the centre and life of the 

 whole. Engaged in a pursuit, eminently adapted 

 to give health to the body, and if prosecuted 

 in a just spirit of inquiry and research, vigor and 

 purity to the mind and moral sentiments, and free 

 from those corroding and anxious cares and embar- 

 rassments, which beset most of the avenues in other 

 departments of industry ; and second in intrinsic 

 dignity to none, whether we consider the pursuit it- 

 self, or the ends which it seeks to accomplish, well 

 may the farmer, who cultivates his own acres, re- 

 gard his condition a most fortunate one, and apply 

 and realize in his own experience the sentiment of 

 the great Ptoman poet, " Oh, too happy farmers ! 

 did you but know your own blessings." 



