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amount that we draw from it, there will be a fearful accumulation of arrears to be settled by our posterity.

Our neglect cannot, indeed, change the substantial forms of nature. We cannot dissolve the Sugar-Loaf. We cannot shake Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke from their rocky thrones, and remove them into the sea or the river. But we can destroy their verdure and strip them of their foliage. We can make their glorious beauty a fading flower, and leave them, and the valleys below them, so exhausted of their natural elements of production and fertility, that when our children go to them for bread, they shall only find a stone.

Why, Mr. President, it has, been estimated by your able orator, that it would require, in round numbers, not less than a thousand millions of dollars, judiciously expended, to restore to that richness of mould and strength of fertility which they originally possessed, the one hundred millions of acres of land in this country, which have already been partially exhausted! And how can we ever speak of our farms as being free from mortgage, or our country from a national debt, while such a state of things exists, and is going on!

Sir, if there be truth, or any approximation to truth, in this calculation, how vastly important has it not become, that our agriculture should henceforth be conducted on more scientific and systematic principles! How vastly important has it not become, as an act of sheer justice to our children and our children's children, and lest they should rise up in judgment against us, as having robbed them of their rightful inheritance, that the practical farmers of our land should be instructed, should instruct themselves, should in some way or other become informed, as to the true nature of the soil they cultivate, and should learn by what processes and appliances, by what manures and fertilizers, it may be kept in a condition- not merely for furnishing food for themselves but for supporting that long succession of generations. which, we hope and believe, are destined, by God's blessing, to maintain for a thousand years to come, a populous, and prosperous, and glorious Commonwealth, on the very spot on which it was first founded by our fathers.

"Plant for posterity," was the saying of the old Roman phi

losopher and patriot, when he was setting out trees at eighty years of age. And there is something delightful in the idea of our children sporting in their childhood, and reposing in their old age, beneath the spreading branches which our hands have reared for them. But "manure for posterity" may well be the more homely, but far more important maxim of the provident and patriotic farmers of the present day. In feeding your children, take care that you are not starving your grandchildren. Let every landlord, every proprietor of acres, remember and realize, that though the fee-simple of his farm is in himself, and though no court of law or court of equity can sustain an action against him for strip or waste, he yet holds the soil in strict moral trust, and is accountable in the eyes of men, and at the bar of God, for the degree of fertility or barrenness which he may bequeath to his descendants.

And most especially, Mr. President, is such a sense of obligation and responsibility needed in our own Commonwealth. In other and newer and larger States, there may be less immediate call for such precautions. They have a richer original soil to draw upon, and much of it is still a virgin soil. They have a greater extent of territory to expatiate in and experiment upon. They may go on cropping from acre to acre, like bees from flower to flower. If they exhaust their farms to-day, to-morrow they may repair "to fresh fields and pastures new." One may almost apply to them the language of one of those charming melodies of Moore's, so familiar, I doubt not, to many of my fair hearers

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'They may roam thro' this world, like a child at a feast,
Who but sips of a sweet, and then flies to the rest ;
And when pleasure begins to grow dull in the East,
They may order their wings and be off to the West."

But we have no such ample territory or luxuriant soil. We are one of the oldest, and one of the smallest States in the Union. Our lands are limited in extent, and more limited in fertility. Poor at the outset, they have been long under the plough. And unless intelligence and science shall do something, and something seasonable and effective, to supply the deficiencies of nature, and arrest the progress of exhaustion, we shall leave little

but desolation and destitution to our descendants, so far, at least, as our own agriculture is concerned.

Our commerce may continue to extend itself, and to spread its wings over every sea; our manufactures and mechanic arts may flourish and thrive; our population may have bread enough and to spare purchased in exchange for the profits of other pursuits. But if we mean to retain within our borders a prosperous and numerous agricultural class, an intelligent, independent, and virtuous rural population

"A bold yeomanry, their country's pride,

Which once destroyed, can never be supplied,"

(and Heaven forbid that we should ever be without one!) we must take good care to hand down our soil as well as our institutions -to transmit our lands as well as our liberties

paired to posterity.

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It is in view of considerations like these, Mr. President, that I rejoice to observe that the attention of our Legislature, and of our people, has recently been awakened to the subject of ‘agricultural education. We have already a noble system of public schools, of which the farmers enjoy their full share of the advantages, and which is amply adequate to the primary preparation of our children for all the various professions and pursuits of life. Forever blessed be the memory of our Fathers for this inestimable legacy!

Other nations may boast of their magnificent gems and monster diamonds. Our Kohinoor is our Common School System. This is our " Mountain of Light,”—not snatched, indeed, as a prize from a barbarous foe, nor destined to deck a royal brow, or to irradiate a Crystal Palace; but whose pure and penetrating ray illumines every brow, and enlightens every mind, and cheers every heart and every hearthstone in the land, and which supplies, from its exhaustless mines, "ornaments of grace unto the head, and chains upon the neck," of every son and daughter of Massachusetts!

But while we cherish our common schools, as now established, as our proudest and richest heritage, it cannot be doubted that our young farmers may be, and should be, provided, in some

other and supplementary way, with the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and science more immediately pertaining to their particular sphere of labor; though whether this is to be done by independent agricultural schools and colleges, like those existing in many parts of Europe, and recently described to us by your own accomplished Hitchcock, or by ingrafting a system of agricultural education upon the schools and colleges which we already have, it is for those wiser than myself to decide.

Mr. President, I may not pursue this topic further. I may not trespass longer on the attention of this most intelligent and agreeable company. I said, in rising to address you, that I was glad to meet here to-day, so many of my old friends of the River Counties. I cannot forget, in concluding, that there are some of them whom I do not meet, and whom I shall meet no more on earth. There are two of them especially, whose familiar forms have presented themselves to my mind's eye more than once on this occasion, and whose memories, in all our hearts, are as green as the sod which covers them.

The one, in the prime of life, with the purple light of youth still lingering upon his cheek, "the expectancy and rose of the fair State," who left no superior at the bar of his own County, and who would have found few equals in the halls of Congress, to which he had been summoned. The other, on the verge of old age, but whose eye was not yet dimmed, nor his natural strength abated, whose cordial grasp and sunny smile will never be forgotten by those who have shared them, and whose hoary locks, so long the ornament of the Senate Chamber, only lent a deeper impressiveness to the words of sober wisdom and of ardent patriotism, to which he so often and so eloquently gave

utterance.

Allow me, in taking my seat, to propose to you, —

The memory of JAMES C. ALVORD, and of ISAAC C. BATES.

MASSACHUSETTS IN 1775.

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE COMPLETION OF A MONUMENT, ERECTED BY ORDER OF THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHU

SETTS, TO ISAAC DAVIS, ABNER HOSMER, AND JAMES HAYWARD, AT ACTON, OCTOBER 29, 1851.

[In reply to a complimentary call from the President of the day, Rev. James T. Woodbury.]

I COULD have wished, Mr. President, that this call might have been postponed to a later period of the festival, or that, at least, I might have been spared from attempting to speak, until the clatter of plates within, and the noise of drums without, had in some measure subsided. But I suppose that one who has just looked on the bones of Isaac Davis, must not permit himself to shrink from any service which may be assigned him. And indeed, Sir, I am deeply indebted to your Committee of Arrangements for the privilege of being present at all on this occasion, and for the opportunity they have afforded me of witnessing the impressive ceremonies of this morning, and of listening to the instructive and eloquent address of His Excellency the Governor.

Sir, we have had many celebrations and jubilees of late in this part of the country, and it has been my fortune to be present at not a few of them. But, though comparisons are sometimes odious, I can safely and sincerely say that there has been none, none among them all, which has seemed to me so peculiarly congenial to the spirit of our republican institutions, so eminently characteristic of the American people and of American principles, as that in which we are now engaged.

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