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State most effectively ? I think we may do it by using, to some extent, 

 Agricultural Institutions which exist, the Town Societies and the Cou 

 Societies. As in the common school system, the people have been lei 

 maintain it voluntarily, so, I take it, the agricultural system of educatio 

 to be maintained voluntarily in the small communities of the State. "! 

 cannot establish any great system, which shall act upon the people dire< 

 and exclusively. You may encourage agriculture, but its support n 

 come from them. 



We have a school fund to encourage education. It furnishes a sn 

 amount only to each child ; but it has encouraged education to such an 

 tent, that most of the towns make liberal appropriations to the suppor 

 schools. It is generally believed that, if we had a fund so large that its 

 come would equal in amount the sum now raised for the support of comr 

 schools, that our system of instruction would be inferior to what it is. 1 

 I have no doubt that it would be so. 



Hold out, then, the inducement to the people to educate themseh 

 and you will succeed. If you have an institution to educate men to 

 among the people, you will do something in that way. If you w 

 to adopt the system of employing a certain number of scientific m 

 as we have employed common school lecturers, you might create 

 educational feeling which would be efficient. For example, if there 2 

 at this moment, fifty town Societies, and if you were to employ a cerl 

 number, perhaps five scientific men, whose duty it should be, in 

 summer season, to go where these institutions exist, (and nowhere e' 

 that their establishment may be encouraged,) to receive and communic 

 information in relation to manures and crops ; and if, in the winter, it w 

 their duty to give lectures adapted to the wants of these localities, I tak< 

 you would do a great deal of good. 



And if your munificence were confined to the towns where these ass< 

 ations exist, lecturers would increase as rapidly as the demand ; and wi 

 out extraordinary effort, you would introduce a system of agricultural ei 

 cation which should reach every young man, give him information, 

 cause inquiry among the great body of agriculturalists. It would be i 

 duty of those individuals to collect and distribute information, so that 5 

 would have a great system of lectures and experiments extending over 

 whole Commonwealth. 



Mr. President, I rose with the intention of not speaking at any leng 

 and I have already occupied some time. These ideas, I dare say, v 

 differ from those of most gentlemen of the Convention ; but I think 1 

 great truth will stand, that this system, however it may be eonstitut< 

 must be maintained by the voluntary action of the people themselves. T 

 State can do nothing more than encourage it. 



