Litchfield enquirer., 1865-09-28
COL. SMITHS ADDRESS. M President, Ladies and Gentlemen !:

The interesting eXnlbltlOn which is now about close at this place, gives evidence in many ways, of modern progress. We have looked on tables, filled not only with cereals and. vegetables. so improved by culture that they can no longer, by their looks, be identi- fled with their original stocks. but have seen also fruits of exquisite flavor. unknown few years ago, that attest the eu,tvator's success as more than preserver or improver-as in some sense creator. Here are cattle like the ante lope for agile grace, for pride of strength like the rhinoceros, master pieces of the breeders skill, in which force culminates in beauty Here too, scores of mechanical appliances for lessening the drudgery of cultivation, attract attention, disclosing the once mystic science of Aehymides and Pythagoras, descending into the hay field, and pulverizing the soil, and by the common conversation of those present one discerns that alchymY deserting her occult lab oratory realizes her prophetic dream. here on these hills and amid these valleys, transmitting fertilizers through corn stalk alimbics into gold. en corn.
 Very forcibly does scene like this impress the mind with the belief, that new era in ag- fviculture is commencing in our time. An era when large intelligence shall seek the farm as the best place for full development, when art shall turn the furrow, and science be as indi- genous to the homestead, as to the college and the laboratory. Facts that come forth con- stantly to challenge observation, force this thought upon us. not as dream of fancy, but as the end toward which visible causes are steadily tending.
 You citizens, are the agents of this progress The things that bid us indulge such hope, are your own achievements. Your presence here in this tent admonishes me, that you nave com pleted your comparisons of these present re- !sults, of this competitive skill, having derived therefrom such instruction as thoughtful expe- rience can alone gather, and that my humber task now commencing should be to strive, not to teach, but to please. And in this endeavor I shall initiate the wisdom of those gaelic bards who when called upon to entertain assembled chieftains reposing after battle, were wont in presence of skillfuI warriors, to sing, not of present strategy and battle, but to tune their harps more modestly to the story of the past
 I will tell you when this art of agriculture, that in our time emerges from ddll drudgery into companionship with the loftiest employ ments, first began-what soil first felt the piough-with what tools and seeds race, ever impatient of labor, commenced the systematic culture of the earth. s..i r
 In searching for that time, that land, that race, we must go beyond the extremest antiqui- ty of any nation now existing. Leaving behind us governments of yesterday, like England and France, tracing upward the stream of history, past the Roman Romulus and Remus, beyond the siege of Troy and the fabulous Argonants, still upward in the growing gloom, groping Raat sSsle Rf Abraham and every other land, and then, alone in the world, we find highly civilized empire already show. ing signs ot age, in Egypt, the valley of the Nile. ''''t ! In every other land history and tradition alike point to time, when the inhabitants were savages, subsisting by the chase, or mo- mads, dependent on Aocks and herds. Such have learned the cultivation of the soil from example or instruction. But these Egyptians from the first were neither huntsmen, nor mo- mads, but agrculturists. While throughout the world elsewhere, were none but wandering tribes, ignorantly despising toll, these patient ly sowed their seed, reaped their harvests, and reared their settlements, from generation to generation, under the shade of their tall palms. Nations that lay contiguous to them derived, after many centuries, from their example the desire, from their knowledge the skill that turned them to agriculture. From these in turn, the benefcieat art can be traced spread ing further on. Thus clearly, distinctly, does history point out the Egyptians, as thepioneers and first instructors of mankind in husband ry.
 The authentic records of this remarkable people, inscribed on their monuments of stone, carry back their history to period that can- not be far removed from that general disper- sion of mankind spoken of in the Bible as oc. curing on the plains of Shinor, and there is no little interest attaching to the question, why did these alone, of all the tribes that separa- ted there to people the earth, attach themselves to the soil, as cultivators, and thus become the transmitters if not the originators of gov ernments and laws. The answer to this question involves striking evidence of providential design. ...su.a- s.3,.l4 -- l..a. s.. a..
 Conceive for moment what manner of men those were that assembled to build the tower of Babel. Whether you judge from the tradi- tions of Armenic times, the ancient sculptures of Assyrian and Babylonian art, or inferentIal- ly from the statement of Moses, you must con- clude that they were more powerful, muscular ly, swifter of feot, of hardier frames, and long CT lives than men are now. And they were free: free not only from all imposed authority but from the necessity for steady labor. The world was all before them, its woods and plains abounding with game, it's streams swarming with fish. The toilsome process of delving the Soll, htlu WdlLlHS lHc SlOM1 kFoWtA VI tAo AoK vest, was an irksome an intolerable way of living, to those whose springy sinews enabled them to tire out in the chase the deer and an- telope. It was on the other hand easy, joyous, thrilling, with a bend of the bew or the cast of the javelin to bring down the bounding stag, and then feast and sleep carelessly, be- meath the spreading palms of Babylon.
 So these naughty, gigantic, childlike men, devoid of all sense of duty to restrain them, were inevitably hunters and warriors Fol lowing the game, they would build no substan- tial residences, found no societies, establish and transmit no Codes of laws invent no let ters, hand down no history, no cumulative learning; make no progressin morals or relig- ion. Their remotest descendants would be, as we have ever found them in countries where they are still to be seen, the same savages, only feebler than themselves muags1 y.9
 Ia There is evidence to show that this state of l things was foreknown to the over-ruling power even in those remote cycles when the founda. tions of the world were laid, and designing better things than this, for our race. He kindly set 9. trap for these men, to catch them and make them, unaware, commence course, that he gaining with the culture of the soil
 should lead them inevitably on, through toil some,a but progressive ages to all that our era
 both gives and promises. -s3l He set trap for them, say, and baited it. Take map of the eastern hemisphere, and tlook at the pear-shaped continent of Africa You find that, in the incalcuIable. antiquity when the once molten earth began to cool, it. trpTfat ,hoAx rad