8 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and salaries increased ; it has gone with the young man and 

 maiden to the school and to the academy ; and the mark of 

 the Puritan character, as made by examples of strict prudence, 

 which in our ancestors entered into every department of 

 domestic, social and public life, has been almost obliterated. 

 While, in turn, the former wasteful and extravagant South, 

 from sheer necessity, has been taught a lesson of great 

 economy. This generation of young men and women there 

 has been inured to hardships, to severe trials, and to continual 

 dependence upon their own efforts. In ftict, the original 

 habits of the Xew Englanders have to a large extent been 

 lost sight of, and have been adopted unwillingly by our 

 brethren in the Southern States. That this chano-e will work 

 favorably to them, there can be no doubt. That with their 

 rich soil and kindlier climate, it will soon supplant poverty 

 by plenty, and scarcity by abundance, there can be no doubt. 

 If we cannot get back to the old ways, we may well fear for 

 the old thrift. • 



The second great evil is in our enormous indebtedness, — the 

 creation of debts which we have little disposition to pay, and 

 which nothing but a want of New England prudence would 

 have allured us into creatinof. 



The largest government indebtedness was reached in 1866, 

 when no less an amount than twenty-seven hundred and 

 seventy-three millions of dollars constituted the indebtedness 

 of the nation. More than six hundred millions of that debt 

 has already been cancelled. Looking from this national debt 

 to state and corporation indebtedness, we find that in 1875, 

 these liabilities are ten times as great as they were nine 

 years previous, and that, instead of diminishing, these 

 liabilities have been rapidly augmenting. It is not certain 

 that these liabilities are not still on the increase. Until they 

 cease to augment, and until the people, from their legitimate 

 industry, begin their cancellation, all hope of a vigorous pros- 

 perity must be abandoned. 



It is a fallacy to suppose that you can pay one debt by 

 creating another, or that you can satisfy a first j^romise to 

 jjay by substituting a second. 



Congress long since closed up the construction account of 

 the national government ; let the peojjle, in their civil and 



