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271

them a similar liability to that of soldiers. As far as relates to those officers who receive a compensation for service, it would not seem to be a violent innovation to take the course proposed. This reservation has however been kept constantly in view that the power to define and impose cost should be discretionary at the commencement of such a system with the Court, and as one citizen, I would cheerfully consent if the public should unjustly prosecute a defendant, that he shall have the same right as exists between individuals, the right of indemnity. The different opinions as to this valuable institution have seemed to challenge the exhibition of those of the officers honored by a joint official association with the soldiers & legislators of the State, but there is another object of no inferior consequence now to be noticed from views in some respects quite different. It is, after offering my congratulations on the success of the measures required to promote education, especially in our primary schools, that of a procedure by the Gardiner Lyceum calculated, with sufficient encouragement to produce most valuable consequences. The seminary of preparatory instruction in the arts & particularly in agriculture has commenced, as I have incidentally learned, a system of promoting by premiums the production of particular articles of the soil. For various reasons no mode of public assistance so well deserves public patronage. The article, to which, as essential to commercial & other interests, that estimable seminary has directed its attention, is the article of hemp, to which flax ought to be added. These would from success in cultivating & manufacturing them cause a revolution by which New England would be independent of the world, and therefore never fretful & jealous, as being united with it. Above all, she might safely say, to our brethren of the South, "if you shall choose nonintercourse as to our manufactures we will hold ourselves at liberty to leave your cotton on your wharves," and perhaps it might be as well to add "your sugar." "Let us be friends, but we will not allow to your impatient ardor of temperament any chances of severing this Union. We will command such means that you shall not presume to hope any thing as to impairing the Constitution our