1886.] TRANSACTIONS. 21 



who belield the superb display by the Worcester Grange, at the 

 recent Show of the Bay State Agricultural Society. What he 

 should insist upon is the abolition of all needless restrictions, — 

 the loosing of all antiquated shackles, that have so long cramped 

 the movements of international as well as inter-State commerce. 

 Thereafter, — with entire freedom of intercourse, he may devote 

 himself to the still further perfection of his methods of cultiva- 

 tion, — to the development of yet choicer varieties, — to the selec- 

 tion and careful packing of sound specimens of approved kinds ; 

 when, with a clear conscience and assured faitli, he can take his 

 rest, awaiting profitable returns. And, to while away his hours 

 of enforced leisure, in the long winter evenings, he may chant the 

 lay that the "Infant Industries" have been humming through the 

 droning air, for the half-century past, in their plenitude of lazy 

 surfeit : 



" Though I should live Ten Thousand years 

 Sucking from sun to sun; 

 I could no more let go that teat 

 Than if I'd just begun." 



Years, — aye, more than a half-century of them, have flown 

 since Daniel Webster predicted the present condition of 

 affairs ; and it is now high time that Massachusetts once more 

 became a commercial Commonwealth. For this, — she need not 

 abate one jot or tittle of her manufacture. If her towns shall 

 not grow quite so fast, their gradual increase may be the 

 healthier. The concentration of people is not, of itself, a beati- 

 tude. With countless conveniences for comfort, and ingenious 

 contrivances for luxury that were better dispensed with ; come 

 also facilities for vice, and tendencies to pauperism, that are the 

 foulest blot upon modern civilization. But the wholesome de- 

 velopment of town and country, which has been so marked a 

 product of the unchecked intercourse throughout this American 

 Republic, will scarcely be impeded by the expansion, still more 

 widely, of artificial barriers to intercommunication. Shallow 

 theorists, or mouthing demagogues, are wont to depreciate our 

 prosperity as a people by styling it the consummate flower and 

 fruit of chance legislation enacted to meet occasional exigencies. 

 They ignore, or overlook in their shortsightedness, the freedom 



