ANNUAL MEETING. 
461 
power of voice, the strength of nerve, nor capability of arrange- 
ment of thought, which he might have possessed when twenty years 
younger. lie, therefore, had to request those who were then sitting 
in judgment, that they would not only make due allowance for the 
want of ability in the speaker, but would bear in mind that which 
should never be lost sight of in the judgment of cattle — ‘ age to 
be taken into consideration/ For more than forty years the chief 
part of his time had been devoted to the study and practice of agri- 
culture. He would not then enter on farming subjects; for those 
he would, Abernethy-like, refer them to his book on ‘ Practical 
Farming and Grazing,’ which was not a collection of the sayings 
and doings of other men, but the detail of his own proved fanning 
practices. He had been brought forward to respond to the toast of 
‘ Success to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and 
the practical farmers of the country;’ probably, from having 
been President of the Northamptonshire Farming and Grazing 
Society ever since its establishment, now four-and-twenty 
years. That society had gone on prosperously from fortunately 
having had the liberal patronage of the noble lord, our presi- 
dent elect (Earl Spencer), who might now be duly styled the 
great patron of English agriculture. Local societies, like this, 
had been one great means of the founding this great national 
society ; and they might now be considered as tributary streams 
flowing into the great national reservoir of agricultural informa- 
tion. The Royal Agricultural Society of England had fully 
answered general expectation ; for, although its establishment 
could only be called of recent date, there were seen, in almost 
every part of the country, improvement in the cultivation of the 
land. It had created a desire of improvement in the generality of 
practical farmers. It had been the means of dissipating many long 
standing farming prejudices, and it had opened the eyes of the 
slovenly and parsimonious, and convinced them that they had 
lost money, by loss of produce, from their niggardly expenditure 
in manual labour. From improvement of education had arisen 
expansion of liberal ideas in the rising generation of farmers, and 
there would, he trusted, be annually a less number of the un- 
serviceable members of the community. This society had been 
the means of producing much farther good. It had added to 
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