The interests of agriculture deserve more attention from the government than they have yet received. The farms of the United States afford homes and employment for more than one-half our people, and furnish much the largest part of all our exports. As the government lights our coasts for the protection of mariners and the benefit of commerce, so it should give to the tillers of the soil the lights of practical science and experience. Our manufactures are rapidly making us industrially independent, and are opening to capital and labor new and profitable fields of employment. This steady and healthy growth should still be maintained. Our facilities for transportation should be promoted by the continued improvement of our harbors and great interior waterways, and by the increase of our tonnage on the ocean. The development of the world's commerce has led to an urgent demand for shortening the great sea voyage around Cape Horn, by constructing ship canals or railways across the isthmus which unites the two continents. Various plans to this end have been suggested, and will need consideration, but none of them have been sufficiently matured to warrant the United States in extending pecuniary aid. The subject, however, is one which will immediately engage the attention of the government, with a view to a thorough protection to American interests. We will urge no narrow policy, nor seek peculiar or exclusive privileges on any commercial route, but, in the language of my predecessor, I believe it to be the right and duty of the United States to assert and maintain such supervision and authority over any inter-oceanic canal across the isthmus that connects North and South America, as will protect our national interests. The Constitution guarantees absolute religious freedom. Congress is prohibited from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The territories of the United States are subject to the direct legislative authority of Congress, and hence the general government is responsible for any violation of the Constitution in any of them. It is therefore a reproach to the government, that in the most populous of the territories, the constitutional guarantee is not enjoyed by the people, and the authority of Congress is set at naught. The Mormon Church not only offends the moral sense of mankind by sanctioning polygamy, but prevents the administration of justice through the ordinary instrumentalities of law. In my judgment, it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit, within its jurisdiction, all immoral practices, especially of that class which destroy the family relations and endanger social order. Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp, in the smallest degree, the functions and powers of the national government.