1882.] HOME MANUPACTURLS. 203 



In solemn truth, Mr. Chairman, the picked men who follow the 

 Board of Agriculture in its rounds, must not be deceived by a 

 superficial prosperity like the gloss of corn manured in the hill, 

 where rains are frequent upon hungry land. Our hearts are full 

 of hope still, or we could not bear this needful work of inspection. 

 If our home manufactures tend in the whole or in part to endan- 

 ger our liberties, and degrade our civilization, the sooner the dan- 

 ger is known the better. In the same hopeful spirit I will read 

 you three or four paragraphs from the pen of a recent writer, 

 whose study of the tendency of his time has attracted much atten- 

 tion. His plan of salvation — -by the way, is simply to lay all the 

 taxes directly upon land, thus practically, he thinks, abolishing 

 private ownership, after awhile. The book has received more 

 notices from the press than any book, almost, of the last few years. 

 I told an old farmer that there was an earnest book with such a 

 plan — himself a large land-holder. He smiled a little, rubbed his 

 chin thoughtfully, said that would be an interesting subject; it 

 might be important, and he advised me to look into it if I had 

 time. The fact is, there is a little ripple of feeling around our 

 manufacturing villages, akin to the great swash of sentiment now 

 agitating the bosoms of the close-packed masses of Europe against 

 their tyrannical landlords. Young trans atlantic Ireland throws 

 stones at grizzly old farmers, old women steal their fencing, and 

 the cast-ofi servants of the rich set traps of grog for the rising 

 American '' hoodlum." The veteran farmer of New England who 

 came in possession of his land when no one, scarcely, would pay 

 taxes on it, who has barely kept his head above water in the rush 

 of near railway competition, while every money-making manufac- 

 turer felt bound to keep his own dairy, and grow his own hay and 

 vegetables, may be expected to smile a little broadly at the rank 

 communism which refuses to pay him a shilling per day for his 

 labor in the rise of water-power or a corner mowing-lot. 



The book is new to me — perhaps not yet thoroughly digested — 

 and the more significant in its objectional features, because of the 

 law just published now referred to which is new to me. But I 

 am not of those who reject a thing entirely, because of its disa- 

 greeable parts. Nowhere have I found the possible decline of 

 modern civilivation described as here: 



Forms are nothing when substance is gone, and the forms of popu- 

 lar government are those from which the substance of freedom may 

 most easily go. Extremes meet, and a government of universal suflrage 



