30 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



taken aAvay but by their own act ; that, as never before, they 

 are men with liopes, rights and interests to labor and to strike 

 for, that instead of being simple spectators of government 

 affairs, they are themselves a part of the government. And 

 they rally round the national banner, as the emblem of the 

 j)ower that has conferred and protects them in their new rights 

 and privileges, with a love and enthusiasm as ardent but more 

 vital and enduring than their love and attachment to the land 

 of their birth. 



Whether they were conscious of it or not, the men who 

 originated and passed the Homestead Act, acted the part of 

 philosophic statesmen. Land to the landless, free homes to 

 those who settle upon and till the soil, whether in the original 

 form of nominal purchase, or the present form of absolute 

 freedom, is the grand stroke of American policy which oblit- 

 erates the diverse national prejudices of our immigrants, and 

 binds them together as a homogeneous and indissoluble nation. 

 But the influence of farming on our people does not end here. 

 We have some national characteristics that are not desirable, 

 and if they were not checked or toned down, would result in 

 great evil. We are extravagant and wasteful ; we are continu- 

 ally aping foreign ideas, customs, habits and fashions ; we 

 are prone to go wild in our business enterprises and specula- 

 tions ; we have a mania to get rapidly rich, and are not over- 

 scrupulous as to the means emploj-ed. We are excitable, 

 running up to fever and boiling heat over the current events 

 of the day, politics or religion, and ready to shout for the last 

 ism that has been concocted. These traits of national charac- 

 ter have their principal development in our cities and large 

 towns, where the population is dense and engaged in commer- 

 cial and manufacturing pursuits, but rarely, or to a very 

 limited extent, among our rural population. In this respect 

 the farming community is the hope of the nation, as the con- 

 servator of our public morals, the controller and moderator of 

 these extravagances, the sheet-anchor which holds the ship to 

 her moorings, how hard soever or from what quarter the tem- 

 pest blows, the ballast and rudder which keep her in position 

 and send her surely and steadily on her course. These are 

 some of the ways and the extent to which farming pays the 

 nation ; and I may add, as including all, that if national life 



