6 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



declared, for we should have been so accessible to attack, that 

 it would have been madness to have commenced that " Resist- 

 ance to Tyrants " which is " Obedience to God." As it was, 

 tories abounded in the cities, each of which was in turn occu- 

 pied by the red coats ; and all must admit that British power 

 was prostrated on this continent by the hard-handed operatives 

 of iron nerve, a majority of them yeomen, who left their ploughs 

 in the furrows, to aid the Farmer of Mount Vernon in unyok- 

 ing their land from tyranny. The men of one town of our 

 county — Danvers — marching sixteen miles in four hours — were 

 so prominent in Bunker-Hill fight, that their dead was one- 

 quarter of the wliole loss. I have yet to learn that a single 

 farmer of Essex, in that trying hour, was false to freedom I 

 Should the crisis arrive, may we set for our posterity tlie same 

 great example of devotion to American principles, which our 

 forefathers have left us to imitate. And may we never forget 

 that when Rome — that victorious, imperial mother of nations — 

 suffered her urban citizens to " crush out" the cultivators, by 

 unjust taxation and the free admission of agricultural products, 

 her power began to wane. Long before tlie race of the patri- 

 cians had become extinct, the free cultivators had disappeared 

 from tlie fields, leaving no recruits for tlie once victorious cohorts, 

 which now fled before the invading Goths. Truly Goldsmith 

 said: 



" Princes or kings may flourish or may fade, 

 A breath can make them as a breatli has made ; 

 But a bold yeomanry, their country's pride, 

 "When once destroyed, can never be suj^plied." 



Peace spread her halcyon wings over the new-born Republic ; 

 and her soldiers, like Cincinnatus, returned to their farms. 

 Sedate, substantial edifices sprang up over the country in place 

 of the log-cabins and smaller structures ; the farmers relig- 

 iously aiding each other at raisings and shinglings, as at their 

 hoeings and huskings. There may be more architectural beauty 

 in the fanciful Pineo gotliic architecture of our time, but these 

 farm-houses, like a substantial old gentleman who has settled 

 down to live on the interest of his earnings, had a well-to-do 

 look. Li the centre rose a massive chimney, between wliicli and 

 the front door was a small entry, with a stair-case having 



