FARM FENCES. 241 



court held the 2nd of Jan., 1632, that the former privileges of said acres bo laid down, 

 and that, as olscwhoro, no man sot corn upon thorn without inclosuro, but at his peril. 

 (Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth, 1G32.) 



The preface to the Massachusetts Province Fence Laws, in 1693, 

 reads as follows : 



"For tho bettor preventing of damage in corn fields, and other improved and com- 

 mon lands, by horses, neat cattle, sheep or swine, going at large." 



The whole underlying principle of the good and sufficient fence to 

 fence out, adhered to still in Massachusetts, is well stated in an 

 earl.vMaw as follows : 



The Newbury Town Fence Law. — January 10th, 1644. — Remembering tho several! i 

 inconveniencyes and multiplicity of suits and vexations arising from tho insufficiency 

 of fences, which to remedy in the oldo town hath been so difficult, yott, in our removal ; 

 to the place appointed for the new town, may easily be prevented. It is therefore 

 ordered, that all fences, generall and particular, at the first setting up, shall be mayde 

 so sufiicient as to keep out all manner of swyno, and other cattle great or small; and , 

 at whose fence or part of fence any swyne or other cattle shall break through, the 

 party owning the fence shall not only beare and suffer all the damages, but shall 

 further pay for each rod so insufficent the somme of two shillings. It is likewise • 

 ordered, that the owners of all such cattlo as the towne shall declare unruly, or ex- 

 cessively different from all other cattle, shall pay all tho damages that unruly cattle 

 shall doe in breaking through fences. (Town Records of Newbury, Mass.) 



And from this homely but perfect statement has gone out the 

 essential features of the American fence S3stem. Whatever the 

 burdens and costs of fencing, whatever the difficulties in securing . 

 the perfect fence, the}^ have been in all our communities counter- - 

 balanced always b}' "several inconveniences and niultiplicitj' of suits . 

 and vexations arising from the insufficiency of fences." Perhaps ^ 

 we are coming to a better wa^'. We are certainly tending toward a 

 better economy in the remedy. 



And we have been long about it. Sixty years ago the pioneer 

 farm journals of the country were full, as with a live topic, of the 

 complaints of the cost and burdens of fences. The first settlers, 

 many of them, had logs enough and to spare for fencing, and the 

 log heap took the rest. In manj' sections the rocky field furnished the 

 material for its enclosing fences, to the relief of the soil thus freed 

 from stones. In these cases it was merely a question of labor. But 

 waste o( timber in fencing came to be complained of in Vermont in 

 1824 as I find in a public print of that period. Three years before 

 that period the American Farmer of Baltimore was vigorusly urging 

 a similar complaint. In 1833 the farmer of North Bend, Gen. Wm. 

 Henry Harrison, iu a public address to farmers, declared the waste- 



