1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 193 



stoiy goes. Another class of writers is discussing the amount 

 and number of mortgages on farms, and is trying to make 

 political capital out of it ; but foreign papers tell us the same 

 story of France and Germany and Italy. We all know how 

 Italian peasants are now seeking relief by flocking to America. 



The fact cannot be denied that farming is under a cloud, 

 and has been so for the last few years ; but I believe that the 

 bottom of the decline has been reached, at least in this 

 country. The United States has given away land, and the 

 old States have bad to compete with land that cost nothing. 

 But the land is practically all given away now, the ' ' frontiers " 

 are gone. So, too, the pasturage is taken up, and hereafter 

 land must be bought for farming, and New England farms 

 will a2:ain rise in value. 



Fanning cannot be killed ; it must and will go on ; and 

 this very conservatism which makes it so difficult if not im- 

 possible to change rapidly, while the source of distress now, 

 is, after all, an element of great value to a nation. 



A Conservator of Conservatism. 



In these days of radicalism and revolution, with free preach- 

 ing of communism, socialism and anarchy, we need a large 

 conservative class for the conservation of the institutions of 

 civilization. This class, to be of sterling value, should own 

 the land they may have to defend. It must be a class intel- 

 ligently conservative ; a class politically independent ; a class 

 having property to lose and homes at stake. Paris suflered 

 at the hands of a commune composed of those who had 

 nothing to lose by any change of government or any destruc- 

 tion of public or private property. 



There is a similar dangerous class in every large city. It 

 is essentially a cifi/ class. Anarchy preaches only in cities, 

 Avhere there are great and oljvious contrasts of wealth, and 

 where there are abundant opportunities for dissatisfaction. 

 There, bodies of dissatisfied men get together, talk over and 

 magnify their grievances, and come to think that their more 

 prosperous neighbors are their natural enemies. Cities are 

 the natural breeding-ground of political disturbances. The 

 old saying, that cities were great sores on the body politic, 

 is just as true to-day in a republic as it was when spoken of 



