Ohio is an agricultural state, populated with those who hold the handles of the plough and fear not poverty, discontent and strikes. The native inhabitants inherited a love of liberty and independence from an ancestry who came to a wilderness to secure _homes_ for themselves and posterity. And it was in these _homes_ a permanent foundation for a superior civilization was laid; and through the providences of a people with _homes_ and families, supported by natural and cultivated resources, that has transformed unbroken forests into fertile fields and developed an intelligent, happy and prosperous people. It is an old and well-founded belief that the earth was not made in vain, but is capable of fulfilling all the purposes for which it was created--now as at any other period in its history. It is also worthy of thought that the interest in the well-being of man by creative and governing intelligence is not less than that extended to the beasts of the fields, and that his title to a share of subsistence on the earth is quite as good as that of the cattle that graze upon a thousand hills. Every one can, and every one should, secure a share in this inheritance while living. His heirship is indisputable, and on which no mortgage ever found a right, room or reason to rest. If every cast-off from the seductive trusts, combines and monopolies--every one of the millions begging bread--had a definite home upon the soil of the earth, there would be room for millions more, and bread riots and starvation would be unknown in all the land. Natural civilization--that made in accordance with the laws of nature--does not consist in aggregating the products of labor into the hands of a few and distributing poverty broadcast to the many, but in cultivating intelligence, securing homes, families, subsistence, comfort and happiness, by every man owning and controlling the products of his own labor. During the first half century of the settlement in the Buckeye State, the equality and advancement of true civilization of the people have never been surpassed in the history of the world. Although their land estates were small, and with that prohibition nature had thrown around the state against all foreign imports, it might readily be imagined the living and populating a great empire on its own developed resources would naturally entail much want and distress. But such was not the fact. They all had enough and to spare, and vagrants were as unknown to public provision as were paupers or want among the sparrows, or the innumerable millions of buffalo that were provided for on the western plains. Those who had homes they could call their own, with families and friends, plenty to supply the necessities of life, were singularly exempt from avarice, or that which since the world began has been denounced “the root of all evil.”