Year: 1872

1t is with hesitation and distrust that |
have accepted this honor at your hands in
being invited to address you this evening, a
hesitation and distrust arising, | assure you,
from no consciousness Of lack Of sympathy
or Of interest in the labors of our agricultur-
lists, our manufacturers, our miners and quar-
rymen, but from the fear that great oppOr-
tunity for good may be in part or wholly lost
this evening" through mere lack of ability on
my part, to fiil up the full measure Of the
responsibility to which you have called me.


But | can, at least, thank you for your
kindness, and in what may say shall de-
sire in advance your charity for my sins of
omission, your indulgence for those of the
other sort. Representing, as does the Board
whose Secretary | am, so WIDE diversity of
material interests, am at loss where to
begin almost; but pre-eminent at the present
as unquestionably are our agricultural inter-
ests, and pre-eminent too asthey ever must be
by virtue of the fact that it is to agriculture
we must look for our very subsistence even, l
may be pardoned if apparently neglecting,
though not forgetting these other interests.
press upon your attention this evening the
interests of the agriculturist. And would
say in advance that have come before you
this evening with no special plea in behalf
of any special means by which these great
interests may be subserved Sufficient will it
be for me if | shall but secure for them your
most earnest consideration, and | may well
leave all details of the matter to the united
wisdom Of your honorable body.


Many thousand years ago when, in the
infancy Of our race, the observing minds of
our heather ancestry sought to account for
the varied phenomena of nature about them,
and peoped field and flower and wood, river
and stream and fountain with their various
deities when upon the fields of battle or in
the quieter paths of peace, Mercury aud
Mars, Venus and juno descending from high
Olympus wrought such feats for mankind
as nowadays "passion, lust and PRIDE" and
the better qualities Of men accomplish, then
it was that the philosopbic mind Of the an
clients embodied in one and another of their
beautiful legends the grand results of their
observations, and handed them down the ages
rich legacies of plentiful truths, half conceal
cd indeed beneath their mystic robes, but
stripped Of these, revealing truths which
then and now and forever, SO long as the
course of nature endures, must remain un.
changing and unchangeable. From them to
us have descended that beautiful allegory
still frequent in rhetorical speech, of Earth,
the bounteous mother Of US all !" To her
their prayers arose; Of her their poets sang
to her their homage was brought; from her
they drew their life and strength, and in her
bosom at the last were they folded to rest.


Has this glorious old legend no story for
us tonight? ? Separated by thousands OF miles
and thousands of years from those scenes
and those times, comes there not to us this
night a message from those far off lands and
ages, which, rightly interpreted, shall bring
both pleasure and profit, both cheer and COM
fort, to ourselves? To-day, no less than then,
we draw all our supplies from the same good
mother. Her bounty provides US now as
then with food and raiment and shelter. To-
day but for her protecting care the countless
millions of the human race would pass from
the face of the earth as fades the evening
mist from the mountain top, before the re-
turn of another season. To-day billion
and third of the human family in every
land and in every cline seek and find sub.
sistence. First food their chief concern, and
the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the
beasts of the field, add their contribution to
the glorious table spread by our common
mother; but in common with US all, at this
same table, fish and bird and beast are alike
nourished aud fed.


To protect her children from the rude
blasts raiment and shelter were added, and
her grand forests, her broad fields, which
with cotton or wool supply the need while
her mineral stores of granite and marble, Of
iron and coal, are exhaustless supplies whence
any one may draw at will whatever may
minister to the necessities or add to the
comforts Of life. Not only do we find them al
hand, but divinely executed will and tesla.
ment is an authoritative warrant of appro,
pration. Excuse me for again appealing tC
the past, and this time to sacred rather thar
to prOfano history,


More than six thousand years ago, in ac.
cordance with the oldest and only record oI
those days extant, this command was ad,
dressed to our first parents " BE fruitful
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it, and have dominion over the fish Of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air aud ovel
every living thing which moveth upon the
earth !" and to-day this race of man in every
corner of the earth, knowingly or not, is act
ing in obedience strict and literal to this d
vine injunction. Back of this decree sciencC
has never penetrated towards this goa
the race in all ages has ever tended. To.da,
every force Of nature is being brought il
su5jection TO man, The winds of heaven fl
the sails of an extending commerce the
flowing river is hurried to its appointed
task the swift lightning has become the
quick messenger of man. Throughout tho
earth the grand army Of humanity moves on
One nestronghold after another has been carried
until nature with all her infinite resources i,
almost forced to eapitulate, and man, wear,