♦ ADDRESS 



Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen of Worcester 



North, and Middlesex West: 



More than two centuries have elapsed smce those hardy poineers, 

 our ancestry and progenitors, of whom we are so proud, lirst grap- 

 pled with our forests, rock bound soil, and climate, to them unusual 

 and severe. Added to every natural obstacle, they had the red 

 man to contend with, whose fire torch and war whoop were as fa- 

 jniliar to their ears as the busy hum of spindle and loom are to ours. 

 Carrying, or rather bringing with them the glorious principles of 

 religious liberty, the Bible in one hand and their " trusty firelocks 

 in the other," quailing or faltering at nothing — physical difficulties 

 or scalping knives — they pressed forward till the fires of the In- 

 dians were extinguished here forever, as by the inscrutable fiat of 

 that power in whose hands are all the corners of the earth, they 

 seem soon destined to be upon this continent, and their name a 

 doubt in the world's histor}^ Passing the epochs which mark the 

 record — the King Phillip and French wars, the war of Independ- 

 ence, when we severed the ties binding us to the aristocracy of 

 Grreat Britain; the war of 1812 with the same power; the war of 

 the rebellion, when our money and blood were poured out like wa- 

 ter upon the altar of slave emancipation ; which war was aided and 

 abetted also by the whole power and influence of the same English 

 aristocracy, I come to consider the question of to-day. Have we 

 preserved our inheritence ? Have we kept up the farms which our 

 fathers handed down with so much toil and labor ? Is the agricul- 

 ture of this day, in this district, or in Massachusetts, equal cor- 

 relatively to what it was at the political epoch mentioned ? Are 

 we, as a farming community, advancing or going backward ? Ai'e 

 we keeping pace with progress in any other pursuits of the da}-, of 

 whatever name, mechanical or scientific? Have we any Ark- 

 wrights, Fultons, Clintons, or Morses in our ranks, in the life, sus- 

 taining and ennobling pursuits of the farmer ? 



By mechanical unprovements I mean such as save labor and im- 

 prove and elevate our race. I do not mean the needle gun, chasse- 

 pot or mitrailleuse. The farmer, with the eye of christian faith looks 



