nearer to equality than is generally supposed. We rarely consider how little is needed where there are no artificial wants to disquiet us,-how much is required in circles where conventional exactions are the rule of expenditure. Misunderstanding on this subject,-ignorance on the part of one portion of the community, of the objects, desires, and wants of other portions, lie at the foundation of all the jealousies which exist between those whose condition is unequal. This misunderstanding should be corrected-these jealousies removed; and he who, instead of contributing to objects of such vital importance, shall attempt to excite in one portion of society prejudices against another, should be ranked among the most dangerous enemies of the republic.

I have already spoken of divisions into classes as undesirable and pernicious in their tendency. They carry with them the idea of opposite interests. Dissociation, separate action, alienation, jealousy, unkindness, opposition, hatred, collision; these are the steps by which their progress to maturity is to be traced in other countries. Let us, then, regard each other as members of a single association, standing in the same relation to the system of which we are a part, and having none but common interests. Let him who has little property consider that those who possess it take with it burdens and responsibilities from which he himself is exempt, that they contribute, in proportion to their possessions, to the public expenditure; that their anxieties are increased, and that great wealth, as the experience of all ages attests, does not contribute to augment the sum of human happiness. On the other hand, let those who have much consider that much is required of them,- that their possessions are a sacred trust which will be best fulfilled by a liberal and confiding regard for those whom fortune has less highly favored. In a word, gentlemen, sympathy and fraternal feeling must take the place of indifference and distrust in the intercourse of those whose condition is unequal. Organize society as you will, however correct your formulas, or

however wisely adjusted the different parts of the system, you cannot make it independent of the passions and affections of men. It is by enlightening and purifying these that the great ends of society are to be wrought out.

And finally, fellow-citizens, let us bear ever in remembrance, as a motive to the fulfilment of our social obligations, that we stand before the world as the chief representatives of free institutions. The great features of this continent seem to mark it out for the accomplishment of labors and destinies of corresponding magnitude,—the Mississippi pouring into the ocean the majestic current it has accumulated in its course of three thousand miles,—the Niagara, collecting the waters of an inland sea, and precipitating them into another in a cataract of gigantic volume and Herculean power, the Rocky-Mountain chain, pushing up its snowy summits to the heavens, with its deep indentation cut down to its base, and indicating a design as palpable as if the Omniscient Power that created it had said, "Through this pass thousands of years hence, the railway which is to unite the Columbia river with the Hudson shall bear the burdens of associated

continents and oceans." A country thus strongly marked in its physical lineaments is a fit theatre for the great experiment we are making of the competency of mankind to selfgovernment, and for the social developments which are in progress here on so vast a scale.

This city, as the metropolis of such a country, should correspond with it in the magnitude of its improvements. Though yet in its infancy, it has proved itself, in all it has done, not unworthy of the distinction. Père La Chaise sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the sylvan grandeur of Greenwood. The aqueduct which conveys the Croton river across the Harlem compares well in the solidity and beauty of its architecture with the kindred work spanning the Valley of Alcantara, or with those magnificent structures which, after the lapse of two thousand years, though now

falling into ruins, still stretch across the Campagna, and by the agency of which imperial Rome was perpetually refreshed by the pure waters of her distant hills.

For what remains to be done, -for popular institutions, on a scale so broad as to embrace her whole population, and to endow all with the capacities necessary for the discharge of their social and political duties, for the facilities which her industrious classes require to prepare them for the exercise of their various avocations, for the depositories of art, and the elementary training which are needed to call out genius and to refine the public taste, she must look to her commercial wealth. Her mercantile men have a reputation as wide as the world itself for their activity, the grasp of their enterprise, and their fidelity to their pecuniary engage ments. Under their influence, aided by the unrivalled energy and skill of her ship-builders, her commerce has been pushed to the very confines of the habitable globe. Neither equatorial heat, nor polar frosts, nor barbarism, nor the conflicts of civilized races, have constituted an impediment to the execution of their commercial adventures. In the beauty, the speed, and the internal arrangements of their ships they have left all rivals at an immeasurable distance behind. They have accomplished all this by their own unassisted energies. They have not, like the mercantile classes of England, been aided by a direct trade with extensive colonial dependencies, from which, until a very recent day, other nations were shut out. They have cast themselves upon the ocean, self-reliant and fearless, and entered into triumphant competition with the whole commercial world. Their boldness, their perseverance, and their success have contributed, in an eminent degree, to the practical vindication of the great element of freedom, as the true basis of international communications and exchanges, and have had a powerful agency in compelling other nations to relax the rigor of their commercial systems. One more great truth remains to be asserted and verified by a stern

adherence to the fundamental principles of our institutions in their social as well as their political requirements,

a truth

to which we should cling with undying faith, that extended commerce, social refinement, and accumulated wealth are perfectly compatible with public order, domestic purity, and national strength.

AGRICULTURE OF NEW YORK.

The following Address was delivered before the New York State Agricultural Society, at Albany, on the 7th of October, 1859.

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, GENTLEMEN OF THE

SOCIETY, FELLOW-CITIZENS:

TWELVE years ago I had the honor to appear before this Society at one of its annual exhibitions in a neighboring county, under circumstances of a peculiar character. I did not come then, as I do now, to present any views or state any conclusions of my own in regard to the great interest to which your labors are devoted; but to perform the vicarious service of reading to you the address prepared for the occasion by Silas Wright. Most of you, I do not doubt, remember well that the address was written by its distinguished author during the intervals of agricultural labor through the summer harvest, not the mere labor of superintendence, but earnest and thorough field-work, with the scythe, the rake, and the hay-fork, standing side by side with his laborers, and measuring his own strength with theirs. A few hours after the closing lines of the address were written, he died suddenly of an affection of the heart. They were, probably, the last lines traced by his pen; and there is no doubt that the sudden termination of his life is to be ascribed to the equally sudden change of his habits, from the sedentary occupations of twenty years in court-rooms, executive bureaus, and legislative halls, to the hard labor of a farm. It might, at first glance, seem more in harmony with the tenor of his public career, if he had fallen in the Senate chamber the theatre on which

his distinction was chiefly earned. But those who know how