Exhibition—Annual Addresses. 79 
Maryland, is worth no more to-day than it was fifteen years ago, 
and many of them are not worth so much. Now, the farms of the 
west are reaching this limit of value, and some of them have 
already reached it, and such as have are worth a principal upon 
which their yield will pay an interest—nothing more. If this 
matter of increase of value is to be continued to be used in sup¬ 
port of a high rate of interest, let us remember these things: Our 
mortgages are not only not decreasing, but they are increasing; 
much of the increase of value is simply capital invested in improve¬ 
ments; there is a limit to the value of farm lands; and when that 
limit is reached, where are the profits coming from after paying 
ten per cent, interest on your unpaid mortgages? “The mort¬ 
gages will then be paid,” perhaps you say. Will they? When do 
you propose to begin to pay them? You will never pay them by 
giving more, and that is what we are doing now. The east passed 
through the same stages of development through which the west 
is passing, and arrived at a point of development which the west 
is approaching, and though paying a less rate of interest than the 
west pays, the east is to-day 
MORTGAGED TO DEATH, 
and the reason must be that she finds it impossible to pay her 
mortgaged indebtedness. What, then, is to be the final result? 
Will the tread of avarice stamp the fertility from these fields, and 
blight the fragrant beauty of these gardens? Is the future to find 
the reaper rusting upon the deserted prairie, and the hum of the 
threshing-machine hushed in the midst of beggary and desola¬ 
tion? Are these farms, with their wealth of splendor and product¬ 
iveness, to empty their occupants into vassalage and mock the tear 
which trickles down the cheek grooved by the sweat and bronzed 
by the sun in which honest toil has dug the American nation of 
to-day? No; this beautiful sunshine which the husbandman has 
scattered as he sowed, and which the harvest-fields of the nation 
have reflected all over the world, and as beautifully as the ice-moun¬ 
tain of the frozen north flings back the ray which dances on its 
surface, will never fade into such a black and starless midnight. 
The builders of our national temple, in whose broad corridors 
45,000,000 of voices chant the melodies of civil and religious free¬ 
dom, and whose pillars are commemorative of past and prophetic 
of future justice, will never be compelled to stoop to beg a resting 
place in its shadow, or a home amidst its magnificence. 
