ANNUAL MEETING. 
471 
quately and fairly tested, we do feel that we are entitled to 
expect at your hands full, fair, sufficient trials — trials which 
shall suffice, not simply to make amusement for a crowd, but 
which shall be a test of real worth. We come not to your meet- 
ing as showmen, to afford amusement : we come not here to sell 
our implements, as at a booth in a fair. We claim no greater 
degree of disinterestedness than other men ; but we are all in- 
terested in the weal of the cause, and we come expecting that the 
Royal English Agricultural Society will justify the expectations 
they have held out, that our implements shall have a full, fair, 
adequate trial ; that they shall be tested by practical and com- 
petent judges, aided by the intelligence of others skilled in mecha- 
nical combinations; and that, so tested, they shall have the stamp 
of value fixed where merit is due. This alone is the reward we seek. 
We value not your prizes of five pounds, and ten pounds, and twenty 
pounds. We value not your medals of silver or gold, if awarded 
merely on the ground of the novelty of their construction, or the 
intricate ingenuity of their arrangements. We bring you our 
instruments — we ask you to subject them to the sound or even 
severe test of practice and trial under competent judges; and 
when you do this, we shall highly value your awards — far, far 
above their nominal amount. If the decisions and awards of 
this Society are to have any value, they must be fair, full, and 
honest, and then they will be a permanent stamp of value and 
utility. Otherwise, they will be degraded to become the mere 
medium of puffing advertisement, enabling makers of implements 
to ride into notoriety on the back of the Society ; and the agri- 
cultural public, who, misled under the apprehension of their 
value, purchase them on their faith in the Society's decisions, will 
be continually subjected to the mortification of finding themselves 
gulled and disappointed by their defective performances. 
Earl Spencer begged to propose, to which there would not be 
a dissentient voice, “ The judges of the cattle show." He bore his 
ready testimony to their care, zeal, and impartiality. He had 
been with them all day, and they had no easy task to perform in 
making their decision. On the morrow they would see such a 
show of cattle as had never before been exhibited at a meeting 
of their Society. It was not the conflicting merits but the over- 
