96 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



made, and with success, to give political privileges and 

 consequence to the tenantry. Still, however, the greatest 

 land-holder in most counties is generally able to carry the 

 elections as he pleases. 



There is no way in which a calm, orderly and intelligent 

 exercise and control of political power can be assured to 

 the people but by a distribution among them, as equally as 

 possible, of the property of the country ; and I know of no 

 manner in which such a distribution can be permanently 

 and peacefully effected but by keeping the land in small 

 farms, suitable to be cultivated by their owners. Under 

 such a system, and under no other, the people will exercise 

 their rights with independence. The assumption of a right 

 to dictate will be frowned upon, if attempted ; and even the 

 small portion of the population who may be tenants will 

 possess the spirit and freedom of the proprietors. 



But I own that it is not even on political grounds that I 

 think our system of independent rural freeholders is most 

 strongly entitled to preference. Its moral aspects, its con- 

 nection with the character and the feelings of the yeomanry, 

 give it, after all, its greatest value. The man who stands 

 upon his own soil, who feels that by the law of the land in 

 which he lives, by the law of civilized nations, he is the 

 rightful and exclusive owner of the land which he tills, is, 

 by the constitution of our nature, under a wholesome influ- 

 ence, not easily imbibed from any other source. He feels, 

 other things being equal, more strongly than another, the 

 character of man as the lord of the inanimate world. Of 

 this great and wonderful sphere, which, fashioned by the 

 hand of God, and upheld by his power, is rolling through 

 the heavens, a portion is his his, from the centre to the 

 sky. It is the space on which the generations before him 

 moved in their round of duties ; and he feels himself con- 

 nected, by a visible link, with those who preceded him, as he 

 is also with those who will follow him, and to whom he is 

 to transmit a home. Perhaps his farm has come down 

 from his fathers. They have gone to their last home ; but 

 he can trace their footsteps in the daily scene of his labors. 

 The roof which shelters him was reared by those to whom he 

 owes his being. Some interesting domestic tradition is 

 connected with every enclosure. The favorite fruit tree 

 was planted by his father's hand. He sported in his boy- 

 hood by the side of the brook which still winds through his 

 meadow. Through that field lies the path to the village 



