of its products by an unfettered domestic commerce, she has ever striven to establish the firm safeguards of independence, union and liberty. How wisely she strove, how unwisely her counsels were neglected, let the witness be the mad rebellion that now rages; which was nourished into being by the hope of aid from foreign states, which seeks to destroy the Union, and to found an empire based on slavery, and which began in the confident belief of its leaders that one single crop raised on Southern plantations and not equal in value to the loyal home-consumed hay crop of the North would, nevertheless, in consequence of its abnormal relation to foreign manufactures and the exchanges of Northern commerce, bring the governments of the United States and Europe in submission to their feet. In this belief, when they raised the flag of treason, they arrogantly proclaimed cotton to be king. To-day, Massachusetts with the bayonet debates on bloody fields the cause of independence, union and liberty. But it is the same cause which on questions touching the national industry she debated through the eloquence of a Webster and a Choate. And now, when the policy of national disorganization that has ruled and rioted in the land so many years has culminated in revolt, the first resource of the nation with which it seeks to invigorate and combine its abused and dissipated strength, is the encouragement of the national industry. The prosecution of a gigantic war upon the principles of a sound financial policy calls for large annual revenues. Such a course is necessary to maintain the national credit, and in the case of an inconvertible currency, to prevent depreciation and the rise of prices. These needed revenues the government derives in largest measure from manufactures. The development of manufactures, such as can be made to take root by a temporary adjustment of tariff and excise, naturally becomes and has become a part even of the revenue policy of the nation. Accordingly, the country is sprouting with new growths of mechanical and manufacturing industry. Let them cover the land. Let villages and towns, the centres of these imperial and liberalizing

arts, multiply and increase, to develop a progressive and prosperous agriculture, to deepen the foundations and quicken the life of society, to distribute the benefits of skilled labor reinforced by an iron-armed machinery, and increased in productiveness a hundred fold, to establish the union of the crop of the farm and the labor of the neighboring factory, foundry, or furnace in ultimate products, which shall become the staples of a pervading domestic commerce at the lowest cost of making exchanges; such a commerce as has been recognized since Adam Smith declared the principles of the wealth of nations, as the most profitable to communities and states. So knit the fibres and harden the sinews of the national strength. Science has called attention to the general fact that the simple substances of which all material things are composed do not, except in combinations with each other, enter into or influence the organic growth of plants. So in the social economy, not the isolation of the farmer or the manufacturer, but the union of both gives the needful element of social organization.

Let England strain every nerve to gain and hold possession of the markets of mankind with her vast and world-embracing system of manufactures and commerce, and let her strive with equal effort to feed from her garden patch the millions whom she thus employs ; and so doing, let her teach the docile nations to devote themselves exclusively to the culture of the earth, and persuade whom she may. We will observe her practice, and draw our precepts for ourselves; and hail

"The rise of empire and of ARTS."

But it is not enough that mechanical and manufacturing industry supply the implements, the markets, and the general conditions necessary to a self-sustaining and improving agriculture. The true principles of such an agriculture must be investigated, inculcated and diffused. This necessity has been most emphatically recognized in the liberal grants of land Congress has made for the establishment of agricultural col

leges. Such a measure is of great import. It implies that the collected, intelligent judgment of the nation was fully persuaded that American agriculture is not what it ought to be, that it is a matter of national concern that a strong effort should be made to introduce and spread a better system of farming than is generally practised, and that this can be effectively done by the thorough instruction of the farmer in the scientific principles and best practical precepts of his vocation. The record of the debates that have attended the progress of this measure, shows that the accumulating evidence of the deep impoverishment of the soil, of the reckless waste of the elements of vegetation, the enormous and unnecessary losses in all branches of American husbandry, and the unquestionable superiority of foreign over American agriculture, impressed the national legislature with the need of vigorous, and the possibility of reformatory action. The measure is suited to the time, when all the resources of the country should be husbanded and developed to the utmost, to enable it to bear with the least suffering the burdens of war. It is the proper supplement to legislation for the encouragement of manufactures. England prepared herself for the impending struggle with Napoleon by the establishment of her board of agriculture during the ministry of William Pitt. The Roman senate sought to invigorate the failing Roman farms by causing the work upon husbandry of the Carthaginian Mago to be translated and published at the public cost; the only literary work that is known to have received this august sanction. Congress has provided in the college a more potent organ of improvement than the agricultural board. More fortunate in its opportunities than the Roman senate, it gives the American farmer the great book of nature, with science to interpret to him, from its open page, the mysteries of his art.

The action taken is wise. What is wanted is to have the farmers of the land put into connection with the highest knowledge of the natural laws of agriculture to which science and observation have attained. In no way can this be done so

successfully, and with such general advantage, as through the training and instruction of a college. To establish this connection, it is not necessary that all should participate directly in the discipline of the institution. The object will be secured. by the pervading influence of the example of farmers, who have had this advantage and manifest the fruits of it in a higher and more profitable culture. The living farmer, disciplined in his calling, master of the resources of his business, which science has developed, managing a model farm and making money by it, is the best possible missionary in the cause of a progressive agriculture. The distribution of libraries will not begin to have the influence of one such man. By the charm of success he will convert whole neighborhoods to the right works and true doctrine. A hundred such men might revolutionize the farming of a state.

Nor will the college diminish the useful and important functions of a society like this. It will rather multiply and enlarge them. It will raise the standard of competition. It will introduce new subjects of experiment, new processes to be tested, improved, discussed and applauded with the prize. A more varied and higher interest will centre in these gatherings. The college sending out to the farms every year a new body of men, fresh from the latest results of investigation and experience, will be felt in our societies as a constant source of life, of progress, and of hope.

Such an institution peculiarly meets the wants of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. We need the higher methods of agriculture to cultivate the land of Massachusetts as it should be cultivated. We have here in diffused centres of manufacturing industry and dense population, the conditions of a self-sustained fertility and of the most profitable farming The agriculture of the state has undoubtedly been benefitted. by it, but not nearly to the extent that is possible. The soil of the state, originally not rich, has been impoverished by the harvests of many generations. The aim should be to raise it to a condition of luxuriant productiveness. It can be done,

and riches can be accumulated in the process. There is a demand in the state for food officially estimated to amount at least to twenty million dollars annually, which the agriculture of the state does not supply, and that demand is increasing.

Contrast the ratios of production in Massachusetts with those of England. Alike having dense populations, and twenty consumers to one producer of food, all the revenue of the manufactures and commerce of England, and her personal capital, as shown by the returns of her income tax, does not exceed two-thirds of the net income from the products of her farms. Of the three hundred million dollars that represent the annual industrial product of Massachusetts, agriculture gives but one-eighth. While from 1807 to 1855 the soil of Massachusetts did not hold its own in average productiveness, every English acre produces thirty-three per cent. more food than it did fifty years ago. This result in England has been effected in response to the demands created by her manufactures through the liberal use of capital, furnished in part from the exchecquer, higher methods of culture and the resources of science. Guano, which the chemist first indicated as a most valuable fertilizer about a score of years ago, has been imported into Europe to an amount in value in 1859 of over one hundred and twenty-five million dollars, and the equivalent in corn of four hundred million hundred weight, nine-tenths of the annual import of which, in 1859, equal at least to three hundred thousand tons, was to England. From the relation of this fertilizer to English agriculture it has been said by a distinguished writer that "America, by her guano beds, rules the price of all the corn markets of Europe, and more especially in England." Again, in the matter of fertilizers annually manufactured in England, the Duke of Argyle, ten years ago, stated in a public address that they amounted to sixty thousand tons. Liebig says that the amount of such material used in England, France and Germany in 1861 was not less than twenty million hundred weight. The same authority informs