12 



and the strength of the nation. They are not the men who de- 

 nounce popular education, or hold back from a liberal support of 

 it. They, as a body, are steady, moderate, loyal, in political ac- 

 tion. Not among them is engendered the venom of party politics. 



It is not this class that the wily demagogue or political adventu- 

 rer, or minister of treason, can delude and inflame with lies and 

 sophistries, and collect into mobs and madden to plunder and 

 conflagration, and put in riotous and deadly array against the 

 government and laws of their country, or any open or covert 

 co-operation with the banded destroyers of our magnificent civil 

 fabric. That fabric finds its foundation and stability in the practi- 

 cal wisdom, and firm, intelligent patriotism of the agricultural 

 ' masses. This does not look as if they were grown stupid and 

 brutal, or were sinking to the status of the serfs, and hinds, and 

 boors, or if you will, the peasantry, bond or free, of other com- 

 munities. 



But our adversaries are not silenced yet. They will say that 

 the history of New England has been exceptional among human 

 histories, and that the peculiar circumstances of the founding of 

 our agricultural class, are such as to account for the present and 

 temporary high character and position of that class. There is 

 truth in this. The first farmers of New Ens-land were remarka- 

 ble men. They were not the scum of European serfage. They 

 were men of learning and of thought. They came hither inspired 

 and sustained by great principles and lofty aims. They came to 

 found a free empire and a Christian State. They betook them- 

 selves to farming here from the necessities of their position. But 

 they v/ere more than mere farmers. They were statesmen. 

 They were theologians. They had borne persecution. They 

 were ready for the greatest sacrifices, for conscience and liberty, 

 and met them all heroically. Thej'- were versed in all the great 

 controversies of the time, civil and ecclesiastical. The}'- fathomed 

 the vasty deeps of the theological problems of that day, and 

 men who could do that could do anything intellectually. They 

 studied the scriptures learnedly, profoundly, devoutly, and that 

 alone is an education. 



Such men, being the first possessors and tillers of the soil here, 

 would, of course, transmit their mental strength and culture, and 



