EXHIBITION OF 1871-ANNUAL ADDRESSES. 
83 
gentlemen who have preceded me. I shall endeavor then as 
best I can to u improve ” the occasion. 
I am not now a practical agriculturist, like my friend Mr. 
Holton, but I was brought up on a farm, and know something 
of the duties—and dignity, too, of the farmer’s vocation. 
Consciously and unconsciously, by our gathering here to¬ 
day, we are doing homage to a pursuit which lies at the very 
foundation of the stability and progress of the American peo¬ 
ple—the pursuit of agriculture. All other professions and 
pursuits are based upon it. “ The earth is the mother of us 
all.” The king himself is served of the field. 
The stability of the nation depends upon the owners of the 
soil. In the palmiest days of Rome, when learning, and vir¬ 
tue, and commerce, and conquest were at their height, the ple- 
bians tilled the soil they called their own. Small farms of ten 
or twenty acres were the rule. Rome, like Egypt, became the 
granary of the world. But when the patricians absorbed the 
homesteads of the people, annexing estate to estate, until a 
very few controlled the landed property of the empire, then 
the latter became reduced to the level of serfs. Roman vir¬ 
tue was a thing of the past; its power was swept from the face 
of the earth. 
Woe be to America if the day shall come (A must never 
come!) when the people by any process whatever, shall be¬ 
come deprived of their absolute ownership in the soil on.which 
they live ; when a few, as in England and Ireland to-day, shall 
own our whole domain. Farewell, then, to republican institu¬ 
tions. 
A people owning the soil will not plunge madly into rebel¬ 
lion. They are the great conservative element of the nation. 
We show, all of us, from all walks in life, from city and ham¬ 
let and farm, our recognition of the value and supremacy of 
the labor idea by coming together on this occasion. We have 
vindicated and secured, in the triumph of our national arms, 
the majesty and perpetuity of this idea. At the mouth of 
more than ten thousand cannon, and at the point of a million 
