AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 35 



I have remarked for many years the increasing anxiety, both 

 here and in the most civilized nations, relative to their annual 

 supplies of grain. England and France often show panic on 

 account of deficient crops. This has nothing new in it. Ancient 

 nations, after suffering the horrors of famine, which were almost 

 always followed by a dreadful pestilence, found it necessary to 

 provide for such events. They therefore continued, while they 

 were wise, to store up grain in years of abundance, and no specu- 

 lation was ever permitted in grain, on pain of death. Sixteen 

 hundred and thirty years ago, the Emperor of Rome, Septimius 

 Severus, kept stored up, for the city of Rome only, grain suffi- 

 cient to make nearly thirteen millions of barrels of flour, which 

 was enough to give the city five thousand barrels of flour a day. 

 for seven years and that supplied one million eight hundred 

 thousand citizens^ with their daily bread. 



We think ourselves wiser than they in many things. We store 

 up mmiey debts by hundreds and millions of dollars^ but it is 

 nobody's business to provide for famine years now-a-days. What 

 occurred lately in Ireland and elsewhere, may easily occur to 

 great nations, by means of a moderate increase in the recent 

 maladies in our great crops. Even here, on one of our broadest 

 grain-growing fields of the world, and with the wonderful advan- 

 tage unknown in the old world until lately — our glorious Indian 

 corn — we have been paying almost famine prices for our daily 

 bread ! The memory of this large audience hardly recalls such 

 prices. I remember only a few such cases in this century. 



Ladies and gentlemen, — We thank you for your presence here. 

 That ladies should be found applauding good deeds, is not new — 

 civilization in every branch of it — from the flower of the garden 

 — the excellency of domestic life — for virtues worldly and hea- 

 venly. Gentlemen, we are happy to see you in the line of your 

 duty, promoting those arts without which our country might as 

 well be returned into the hands of the red men, whose war-whoop 

 for ages raised horror on the land covered by this palace. You 

 have the mighty work before you of tilling and adorning a con- 

 tinent. Vast is the prospect before you. Learn to be as great as 

 the continent you command. Little islands, with little creeks — 



