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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Aprii 



MASS MEETING AT SUDBUHY. 



The citizens of Sudbury had a meeting Feb. 3, 

 in the Town Hall, regularly called by warrant, to 

 devise measures to call the attention of the Leg- 

 islature to their overflowed lands, at which the 

 selectmen were authorized to petition, com- 

 mence suits, or do whatever seemed desirable to 

 abate the evil. On Saturday, the citizens again 

 assembled, and were joined by persons from 

 most of the neighboring towns. The meeting 

 was called to order by Capt. Wm. Rice, and 

 Samuel Puffer elected Chairman, and J. 

 Parker Fairbanks, Secretary. After a brief 

 reference to the Town Meeting on Thursday, the 

 chairman of the Executive Committee of the 

 Jtiver Meadoio Associcdion was called upon to 

 report what progress had been made in certain 

 duties with which it had been charged. He sta- 

 ted that several meetings of the Committee had 

 taken place, that a large sum had been pledged 

 to defray the cost of suits, printing, counsel, or 

 whatever other expenses might accrue. He al- 

 so stated that word came to him from various 

 portions of the State, encouraging and urging on 

 the movement, because they say it exposes evils 

 common in every part of the Commonwealth. 



Dr. J. Reynolds, of Concord, spoke of the 

 great depreciation of the lands in question, and 

 illustrated his point by reference to similar dam- 

 age on Ipswich River, and of the attempted re- 

 dress by the owners. He said the old Middlesex 

 Canal Company had enjoyed its privileges fifty 

 years, and then sold them out to another party 

 for a song, and sold out the rights of our citizens 

 with them. 



Col. David Heard, of Wayland, then gave a 

 detailed and clear statement of the rise of one of 

 the dams at Billerica, and the reservoirs at Hop- 

 kinton and Marlboro', and the immense damage 

 occasioned by them in the depreciation of lands 

 and the diseases generated by their miasma. 



Capt. Wm. Rice, of Sudbury, said he had 

 knoM'n the meadows for seventy years — fifty years 

 ago they were very valuable ; then a horse could 

 be gallopped across them from shore to river 

 bank. People often came from Framingham and 

 paid $10 a ton for the hay that grew on them. 

 There is a great deal of land that people don't 

 call meadow that is nearly ruined. 



Mr. Thomas Battles, of Sudbury, said the 

 best meadows, thirty years ago, were worth $100 

 an acre, and that some of them cannot be sold for 

 a single dollar an acre now ! 



Mr. Horace Heard, of Wayland, said, these 

 lands, in 1813, were worth more than the up- 

 lands ; that at the death of his father, the mead- 

 ows were appraised at as high a price as the best 

 uplands with the buildings on them ! He said 

 the people of Wayland petitioned in favor of the 



Boston Water-works, because they were told they 

 would divert the water from the Sudbury river 

 that flows in from the Cochituate lake, and thus, 

 in some degree, relieve their lands. 



Mr. E. Stone inquired of Mr. Heard, wheth- 

 er the water from the reservoir operates as inju- 

 riously now as it has heretofore ? Mr. H., in re- 

 ply, said it did. There is no diminution of dam- 

 age. 



Mr. J. P. Fairbanks said if the people could 

 believe that any remedy was at hand, they 

 would pour out their money to prosecute any 

 lawful means of redress, — but they had sufi'ered 

 so long, and the laws or charters were so unjust 

 and oppressive, that hope had become nearly ex- 

 tinct. Still they were ready to act. Within his 

 recollection he had known these meadows rented 

 at the rate of ten acres for ten successive years 

 for $1000 ! Now the same lands are a curse to 

 the owner, and to those who live near them ! 

 Three years ago, he had great promise of a cran- 

 berry crop, but the floods destroyed so many that 

 he got but forty out of two hundred bushels — 

 and this evil is now annual. Floods come upon 

 us when no rain falls, and the drier the time 

 the larger the flood, so that on farms where 

 they have gathered 500 bushels of cranberries a 

 year, they do not get enough now to make sauce 

 for a Thanksgiving dinner ! Five thousand dol- 

 lars' worth of this healthful and valuable fruit is 

 annually destroyed by these floods, and this 

 source of income cut ofi" from our people. 



Mr. S. Brown, of Concord, said, annual losses, 

 similar to those mentioned by the last speaker, 

 were realized by most of the towns in the valley 

 of the Sudbury and Concord rivers. He believed 

 that neither the Legislature nor the people of 

 the county, were aware of their extent. He was 

 told that two or three individuals were permit- 

 ted to cause these damages through the potency 

 of certain charters — charters that cannot be re- 

 voked, though they swallow up your lands with 

 floods, and scatter disease and death over the fair 

 homesteads of our people. He did not believe 

 in such charters — they appeared to him more 

 like certain things that had been done "by the 

 divine right of kings," or the monopolies of 

 Henry VIH. or Elizabeth, in conferring upon 

 some favorite a monopoly of wine sales, or silks, 

 or salt. If some blundering Legislature had con- 

 ferred privileges upon corporations inconsistent 

 with the rights of others, a wiser one should take 

 instant steps to correct the error, rather than by 

 unfair limitations cut oS" the people from every 

 source of redress. He did not believe a single 

 vote could be obtained in the present Legislature 

 to grant such monstrous powers as were said to 

 be conferred in the charters to which he had al- 

 luded. He had not examined the charter of the 



