C. F. ADAMS'S ADDRESS. 427 



them ; the smallest of them, Dover, counting barely six hun- 

 dred residents, whilst the largest, Roxbury, contains thirty fold 

 that number, or more than eighteen thousand. 



Of course it follows, as a conclusion from this exposition, 

 that agriculture is not the general or the leading occupation of 

 this people. The population of purely agricultural countries 

 is generally more uniformly dispersed, subject only to the acci- 

 dental configuration of the land, mountain, valley and river, 

 and to the concentration of commercial depots. It also follows, 

 that the pursuits of this unequally distributed population must 

 be as various and as opposite as the numbers into which it is 

 divided. Whilst it can scarcely be said of any town, that it is 

 inhabited by a population exclusively rural, the manufacture of 

 some article or other of human invention to meet the wants of 

 civilized man being more or less associated with the industry of 

 every one, it is clear that the proportion of time consumed in 

 the one or the other pursuit in the different places, must be al- 

 most as unequal as the size of these places. To this cause of 

 mixed occupation we nmst attribute the smallness in the 

 amount of surface improved, and the disinclination which more 

 or less prevails to agricultural advance. Indeed, so great is the 

 diversity of condition and situation in this regard, that no dis- 

 cussion of agricultural topics can be expected to be of any 

 great use here, in which it is not constantly kept in mind. 



Furthermore it should be observed, that by a comparison of the 

 county table of population furnished by the census of this year, 

 with that of the year 1840, it appears that the material increase 

 which has taken place, in the aggregate about five and twenty 

 thousand, is not to be ascribed to the development of its agri- 

 cultural, so much as of its other industry. Whilst the two 

 towns of Roxbury and Dorchester, nearest to the great central 

 market of Boston, have just about doubled in numbers, the 

 more remote townships, in which agriculture is relatively a far 

 more general occupation, have scarcely gained at all. Whilst 

 the limited region, extending ten miles from Boston, and em- 

 bracing but six of the twenty-two towns, has gained sixteen 

 thousand, all the remainder have acquired little more than half 

 that number. The inference which I draw from this is, that 



