34 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of trust, — the many revealed and the many more yet hid- 

 den, — until the country turns in sorrow, like Washington to 

 Lafayette after Arnold's treason, saying, "Whom can we 

 trust now ? " None of these : it is the childlessness of our 

 New-England homes. Often it stands for bereavement, but 

 far oftener for nameless crime, which blasts a nation's life, 

 which is shaming, by comparison, our Protestant church and 

 faith, hardening the human heart into irreverence for human 

 life in all its stages. Even though life were sometimes 

 crushed out by its appointed and assumed burdens, it is bet- 

 ter to be Abel than Cain. 



Farming in New England must be restored. We shall not 

 be coaxed, but compelled. We are not now using persua- 

 :sion, but prophecy ; for we are fallen upon days when ne- 

 • cessity, not preference, rules: and when necessity takes the 

 -form of human progress, compelled by the laws of Provi- 

 dence, who would wish a better master or guide ? Prices, 

 products, location of land, elsewhere Avill compel its cultiva- 

 tion. The West is not all a garden or a river-bottom. 

 There are portions whose exhaustless soil and favored loca- 

 tion defy competition ; but the exceptional instances are 

 now rare. Again : no one State will ever have the monopoly 

 of manufacturing that Massachusetts once enjoyed. The 

 Merrimack may continue to drive more machinery than any 

 other river ; the Housatonic pushes its magnificent mill- 

 power down to the ocean : but the Mohawk, the Genesee, 

 the James, and the Niagara sending its compressed air to 

 Buffalo, are at least rivals. 



Especially must Western Massachusetts have some readier 

 way to the coal-fields, which way at the same time shall give 

 another outlet to Berkshire. There is no prospect more 

 hopeful than, no other opportunity so open for our advan- 

 tage as, that which lies in the fact that we are no more than 

 twenty miles from a point where two railroads, — the Dutch- 

 ess and Columbia, and the Rhinebeck and Connecticut, — 

 crossing only a single county, lead to the two great coal- 

 depots of America, — Newburg and Rondout. Why could 

 we not build our Massachusetts Central in Massachusetts, 

 and not in Connecticut? 



Through what a long desert the nation has passed, of 

 barren hopes, and toil that bore no fruits, when the sweat 



