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stability and safety. In the industrial classes of a State this is always so. 

 A profound French writer (j\l. Guizot) has attributed the failure of the 

 earlier civilizations to the iact that in each of them some one element of 

 industry and success prevailed exclusively, or so greatly as to overpower 

 all the others. Let us attend to the minority interest of agriculture in this 

 Commonwealth — let us pive to it the largest beneficence of lecislation ; let 

 us throw over it and around it all the graces, and attractions, and usages 

 of the most advanced stages of social life ; let us unite all our hopes and 

 all our fortunes with it, if we would escape the i'ate of these other and ear- 

 lier civilizations. For, be assured, fellow-citizens, while the sjjirit of com- 

 merce and manufactures is perhaps the greatest instrument of the widest 

 improvement, and culture, and power, so long as other co-ordinate ele- 

 ments of improvement exist beside it, yet example and theory alike justify 

 the belief, that with its complete preponderance would commence an era of 

 stationariness or decline in tiie State. 1 do not, by any means, criticise or 

 underestimate the intense commei'cial spirit of our State and our time ; 

 it has given vitality, and force, and enthusiasm fo our marches in the irre- 

 pressible procession of American progress ; but, nevertheless, let wise and 

 good-hearted politicians, and all public teachers, and all liberal legislators, 

 and all forecasting philanthropists, protect and strengthen every policy, 

 every influence, and every scheme of education, wliidi shall form a salutary 

 check to the exclusive tendencies of the commercial spirit. The agricul- 

 tural class will be the only bulwark of this public safety. 



Mr. President, I rejoice in the indications which are apparent here and 

 all over Massachusetts, that there is no antagonism of disposition between 

 these producing classes of our society. I behold, every Avhere, from the 

 ends of the Capes to the border lines of New York, the unity of labor and 

 the union of laborers. They are all one, in one cause. I meet here, to-day, 

 the members of this useful and prosperous Society of Norlblk, sitting and 

 rejoicing under the presidency of one (the Hon. Marshall P. Wilder) who 

 has applied the results of well-earned commercial fortune to the develop- 

 ment of the capacities of the earth, so largely and so liberally, that in every 

 household and at every fireside in America, where the golden fruit of sum- 

 mer and autumn gladdens the sideboard or the hearthstone, his name, his 

 generosity, and his labors are known and honored. I meet here, as I meet 

 at every Exhibition in the State, those coming fi-om commerce and the 

 factory, and the workshop, who apply the wealth of the other classes to the 

 wealth of yours, in contributing to these shows of the stock, and the crops, 

 and the fruits, which make our agricultural exhibitions brilliant and mem- 

 orable. If they are fiincy-fai'mers, let us welcome their co-operation all 

 the more gladly, for they are doing more than any other equal number of 

 men in the State, by exjieriment and by expenditure, to improve the stock 

 of horses and cattle, to test the jjower of the land to yield its great wealth 

 of crops, to grace the j^jarlor and the kitchen with all which the soil can 

 furnish of profit, and beauty, and fragrance. I welcome those who are 



