_

I evince the satisfaction and cordiality with which I receive your
Address by placing myself in this Chair, as your Patron, on the
very instant the distinguished Seat is offered to me; and the first
sentence I shall deliver from it is, to assure you that my most
zealous exertions shall be used to promote the great objects we
have in view, in every way that may depend upon me.

I am gratified for the present, sanguine and confident for the
future, when I look around me and perceive the distinguished
persons of whom this Society is composed, and the interest which it
has excited; and it is particularly pleasing to me to find myself
supported by the distinguished person whom you have placed in the
President's Chair. I congratulate you, Gentlemen, upon such an
election, and myself on having such coadjutures.

The Agricultural and Emigrant Societies being now about to go into
immediate, and, as I hope successful operation, it may not be
useless to express to you, and through you to convey to the Public,
some appeals to those exertions which will be required to realize
the benefits which we here contemplate, and for attaining which,
the course is now so clear.

This fine, and as I have hitherto found it, happy Province, is
advancing rapidly, with growth almost exuberant, to a station, the
real intrinsic character and condition of which, in other times,
will depend mainly upon the manner in which we who are now
directing its affairs, in certainly a critical period of its
advancement, when it is daily developing its resources, and forming
its system, may discharge our several duties, by doing all that may
depend upon us to train, sustain and correct the principles, habits
and pursuits, and to regulate the exertions, by which,
unquestionably, it may be conducted to a state of great prosperity.

To consider these duties with reference to all the obligations we
owe to the Country, in the several branches which contribute to its
most political and statistical progress, would lead us away far
beyond the sphere of our present purpose; I shall, therefore, only
consider the duties we have to fulfil in regard to the Institutions
now completely organized. The several purposes contemplated by
those Institutions call upon us to promote habits of frugality,
domestic economy, and useful i