The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-10-30
BALTIMORE.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 80, 1858

When the Hon. CALEB CUSHING was invited to
deliver the special Grafton at the National Agri-
cultural Fair at Richmond, we entertained a hope
that his discourse would be of a nature pertinent
to the occasion. We presumed that gentleman
of his varied accomplishments would not fail to
seize so favorable an opportunity of impartipg to
his auditors a good deal of valuable information
upon so important subject as that of agricul-
ture. He was about to address an assembly made
up chiefly of Farmers and Planers-men who had
been drawn from remote points to a common CEN
tre under the expectation of learning something
that would be advantageous to them in their vocal
ton.
Every thing around him geoponical. There
were fat oxen in the stabes-there were blooded
horses in the riug-to the right and left of him
were patent reGperS and portable saw mills, and
scattered throughout the enclosure were all those
manifold contrivances which modern science has
invented to lessen the labors of the husbandman.
On such field, amid such display, and in the
presence of a multitude chiefly composed of tillers
OF the soil, he could have been at no loss for a
text. He might have taken up the simplest imple-
ment on exhibition, and explained its history,
Its uses and its merits. Or he might have
treated of the weevof the potato rot of the best
mode of raising and curing tobacco-of the
scab in sheep-the hollow horn in cows or OF
farcy, mauders, or any other Of the diseases that
horsetiesh is heir to. If none of these themes
suited him, there was yet wide field before him.
He might have sketchcd the progress of agrcultu-
raj improvement in modern times, or have COM
FL, II. Il
of husbandry, with that adopted in the Old Do
minion. He might have told them that meagre
crops were generally consequence of slovenly
cultivation; that sedge fields standing re-
Duke to the intelligence of q neighborhood; that
mari, or lime, or sea-ore, judiciously applied,
and properly followed up with green crops,
will renovate the poorest soils, and that
the sub-soil plough would develope a
better ''fundum'' than the famous ''oyster fun
dunn of Governor WISE. He might even have
undertaken to explain the difference between a
New England Pumpkin and Virginia crook
necked Squash; but he did none of these things.
In the midst of an agricultural assembly-sur-
rounded by implements of agriculture-in the
presence of Bovine and Porcine animals and Gal
lnaceous fowls-he ventilated his eloquence on
Politics. He admitted, at the outset of his dis
course, that the subject was ''novel for such an
OCCASION" but added that, in his Judgment, the
series of observations he proposed to submit "were
altogether appropriate" With this brief apology
for the ''novelty' of his discourse, he proceeded
'frs to analyse the distinctive elements of the ac-
"tual condition-geographica, social and political
"-of the UNITED STATES" and finally launched
boldly out into defence of the manifest des-
tiny theory, as Introductory to his main argu-
ment in favor Of fillbusterism. He endorses
the suggestions of 'the Ostend Manifesto"
and contends that it is our duty to absorb
Mexico, and to take possession of Cuba if she
stands in our path. All this, and much more will
be found in the extract we have reproduced in
another column, and to which we propose to re-
fer more particularly hereafter. At present we
can only briefly express our adherence of the
doctrine he enunciaes, and of the political COM
bnations it foreshadows. The whole speech bears
strong internal evidence of generalization, and we
should not be at all surprised to learn that it was
designed to pave the way for new Southern
movement.