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MR. PRESIDENT 



Although I feel as much surprised as gentlemen who have preceded me, 

 in addressing you, yet I have none of their embarrassment, because I take 

 the call upon me as a matter of course. I have been unable to attend this 

 meeting during the day. I have come in this evening solely for the pur- 

 pose of expressing rny own sympathy and that of the Society with which I 

 have the honor to be 'connected, and wish, with your leave, sir, to content 

 myself for the remainder of the evening with being, as I have already been, 

 a gratified listener, and a listener only to what may be said. 



SPEECH OF MR. KING, OF RHODE ISLAND, IN RESPONSE TO THE 

 CALL OF THE CHAIR. 



MR. PRESIDENT 



I can best return the compliment which I have received at your hands by 

 being as brief as possible. The two great evils agriculture has to contend 

 against, are torpor and prejudice. The torpor has been dealt with by the 

 Societies in existence. Not many years have elapsed since the old farmer 

 used always to turn out of his house during the summer to do his work. 

 All the warm season he was occupied with his crops ; and in the winter he 

 was too lazy to do any thing at all. How stands the case now? Let this 

 crowded house this evening answer. (I had the pleasure of addressing the 

 farmers of Barre, a few evenings since ; and, in spite of the storm which 

 prevailed, the effects of which we see even now in our streets, the hall was 

 filled to overflowing.) That old torpor has been driven away by the perse- 

 vering efforts of Societies. They began their operation, and I am not so 

 young but what I remember their commencement, and have continued their 

 exertions faithfully to the present time. Men found that the secret in every 

 combat was combination. The old fable of the bundle of sticks was 

 brought into practical operation. 



But there is a terrible power, yet *to encounter; and that is prejudice. 

 There is no one of the operations of life in which there is so much prejudice 

 as in the farming community. Prejudice is there the child of ignorance. 

 The question then comes up, How is this prejudice to be encountered? It 

 is to be encountered by education. The man with maturity of years has 

 grown up with all his prejudices. The old gnarled oak must stand as the 

 winter of its youth has left it ; but the young twig remains. And there is 

 no one here too old or too young to carry his recollections back to his mo- 

 ther's knees. There is the first school. Let a child be supposed to be 

 rather smart, and immediately he is marked out as the lawyer of the fam- 

 ily. Let him hoard up his pennies, and make good bargains with his play- 

 mates, and he must be a merchant. But let him be a blunderhead, and he 

 is the farmer of the family. He takes in this prejudice from his mother's 

 lips. 



Let him learn, at the start, that the farmer's occupation is the noblest of 

 all. Let him remember that Washington called it " the most useful, the 

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