No. 4.] AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 357 



eighth of which bear directly upon the subject under 

 consideration. 



Eesolved, 4. That agricultural schools having been found, 

 by the experience of other nations, efficient means in promoting 

 the cause of agricultural education, which is so essential to the 

 prosperity of farmers and to the welfare of communities, it be- 

 comes at once the duty and policy of the Commonwealth to 

 establish and maintain such institutions for the benefit of all 

 its inhabitants. 



Besolved, 5. That the several plans for an agricultural 

 school, recently reported by the board of commissioners ap- 

 pointed for that purpose, are worthy the profound considera- 

 tion of the people of Massachusetts, and their representatives 

 in the General Court, as indicating the feasibility and practi- 

 cability of an establishment worthy that exalted character 

 which the State has secured by the endowment of kindred 

 institutions, designed, like these, for the diffusion of useful 

 knowledge among tlie people. 



Resolved, 8. That the convention respectfully suggests to 

 the Legislature the propriety and expediency of reserving the 

 entire proceeds of the sales of the public lands of the Common- 

 wealth, — from and after the period when the Common School 

 Fund shall have reached the maximum fixed by the Act of 

 1834, — for the purposes of education and charity, with a view 

 to extending that aid and encouragement to a system of agri- 

 cultural education, which the importance of the subject so im- 

 periously demands.^ 



The discussion on the different resolutions was continued 

 into the evening session, and among those taking part were 

 Marshall P. Wilder, Gov. George S. Boutwell, President 

 Hitchcock and Professor Fowler of Amherst College, Judge 

 Mack of Salem, John Brooks of Princeton, and William 

 Buckminster, editor of the "Massachusetts Ploughman." ^ 

 The fourth and fifth resolutions were adopted, but the 

 eighth was presumably discarded, though no action to that 

 effect is found. Section 4 of the bill to establish a State 

 Board of Agriculture, rejected by the Legislature of 1851, 

 contained, however, the idea expressed in the eighth 

 resolution . 



> Agriculture of Massachusetts, 1851, ji. 405. ' Ibid., pp. 406-434. 



